The Nationals WA are moving to protect businesses from the full brunt of cruel payroll tax hikes being imposed by the McGowan Government.
Treasury and finance spokesman Terry Redman will move an amendment to lift the payroll tax exemption threshold from $850,000 to $1 million.
It comes as legislation is debated in WA Parliament today to slug businesses with damaging payroll tax rate increases.
Mr Redman said The Nationals wanted to soften the blow of the McGowan Government’s tax increase, which will have damaging downstream effects on small to medium-sized businesses.
“Changing the rate of payroll tax will be crippling for smaller businesses, with higher costs for goods and services passed directly downstream,” he said.
“To accommodate higher costs, small and medium businesses will be forced to shed workers and reduce investment, a disastrous result for the State’s economy.”
Modelling by the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry shows 908 jobs will be lost across small and medium enterprises as a result of the McGowan Government’s broken election promise.
“The payroll tax slug will reduce debt by less than 1 per cent over the next four years while costing the State $1.5 billion of economic activity and thousands of jobs,” Mr Redman said.
“It’s going to cause insurmountable pain for WA workers and households as businesses pass the burden of higher taxes down the pecking order.”
The Nationals took a policy to the 2017 State election to increase the payroll tax exemption which would have delivered payroll tax relief to more than 10,000 small to medium businesses, creating thousands of WA jobs.
“This would have been funded by our plan to increase the outdated special lease rental fee paid by BHP and Rio Tinto,” Mr Redman said.
“The Labor Government had no economic plan going to the election. Instead they are breaking a key election promise by increasing taxes as a way of paying for their extravagant election commitments.”
“Raising the payroll tax exemption threshold to $1 million will go some way to stopping the impact of the tax hike on businesses that can least afford it.”