Question

How the Australian Government and the Australian Taxation Office assisted both businesses and taxpayers during the Covid-19 crisis.

In your essay, you should address questions such as:

1. What type of assistance was given to the taxpayers?
2. In your opinion, did the Government act swiftly enough?
3. In your opinions, was the assistance enough or could the Government have provided more?
4. Who benefited the most from the assistance provided and who missed out?
5. Overall do you think the assistance was effective?

Answer 1

A variesty of steps have been taken by Te Government and ATO to assist bot businesses and individual taxpayers.Following are the main pointers -

• tax free witdrawls from superannuation funds
• tax free payments to small and medium businesses
• "backing business investment" initiative so as to facilitate accelerated depreciation benefit to businesses
• Payroll tax waivers by State Governments
• Deferral of tax filing date
• Deferaal of due dates for tax payments
• Tax reliefs in Land Tax

The Government had swung in action in March 20 itself.a month earlier would have been a better act because WHO had declared COVID 19 as pandemic in mid January 20.

The assistance looks reasonable as these also have long term effects on the Treasury and also the duration of pandemic is still unknown and no vaccine looks into sight.

The main focus as been on small and medium businesses so as tey have sufficient cash flow support and retain the workforce.