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The PKF Tasmania blog covers a range of topics. There are blogs for individual's wanting to increase their personal wealth, business owners wanting to start or improve business and people needing assistance through the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

COVID-19 Blog - 2020-05-05

COVID-19 - Jobkeeper - The Critical Last Step

Most businesses knew there was a place on the Australian Taxation Office website where an expression of interest could be lodged in the federal government’s JobKeeper support programme. This received a lot of publicity and was unveiled at a time of great uncertainty where a prospect of financial support from the government was very welcome. While it is clearly set out in the Rules which administer the programme, the final necessary step has not received a lot of publicity and there does not appear to be a widespread understanding of its existence. This was apparent when I spoke to numerous clients about it being a requirement last week as I arranged for them to comply with it. Yes, there is a further step, which is the lodgement of a monthly claim form. It will need to be lodged at the end of each month for the term of the JobKeeper programme. The form requires the exact number of eligible employees for whom the minimum $1,500 has been paid in the JobKeeper fortnights. In addition, it requires the actual business turnover for the month of April 2020 and an estimate of the likely turnover for the month of May 2020. Once the monthly claim has been made within seven days of the month end, the Australian Taxation Office has until fourteen days after the end of the month to pay the subsidy. It is not unusual that the Australian Taxation Office IT system experiences delays on critical tax return lodgement dates when tax agents around the country lodge returns at the same time. It will be interesting to see if the system can cope with the lodgement of these monthly declarations being lodged on behalf of at least 540,000 businesses between 4 and 7 May and whether the electronic payments can all be made by 14 May. This is a very valuable programme and the difference between a business continuing and failing from my discussions with business owners. I trust all will go smoothly.