Small businesses have some welcome relief from the NSW government’s budget with cuts to several levies but a lack of tax reform was disappointing, Matt Wright said.
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The Dubbo Chamber of Commerce and Industry president welcomed the decision to abolish insurance duty for small businesses on commercial vehicle insurance (including aircraft), professional indemnity insurance, and product and public liability insurance.
The changes will apply to businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $2 million and will take effect on January 1, 2018.
Mr Wright said businesses would benefit from the removal of insurance levies but said many more would have stood to gain from an increase in the threshold of the payroll tax.
“That’s really the big one for us. I here so many businesses that are being inhibited by it. The current cap is only $750,000 and it doesn’t take much for a business to reach that.”
“The costs when you reach that threshold are about $10,000 so they are quite significant.
“There are businesses who find it a disincentive to take on additional employees if they are close to that figure.
“In terms of a figure, we would like to see the threshold double at least.”
Mr Wright’s thoughts were echoed by Western NSW Business Chamber regional manager Vicki Seccombe, who said the government had a great opportunity to help businesses.
“With energy costs increasing, business is looking to government to provide relief on other cost pressures, and easing the payroll tax burden would be one way of achieving this,” Ms Seccombe said.
“We had called on the government to adjust payroll tax thresholds to put NSW on a more competitive footing with other states, and to enable more businesses to grow their workforce without being hit with a payroll tax bill.”
Ms Seccombe said it was good to see projects like the Newell Highway upgrades, Dubbo Hospital, Mudgee Hospital and the Broken Hill Pipeline receive funding.