Last week we saw New South Wales throw the kitchen sink at their budget to give small and medium businesses a boost, and this week we have seen Victoria throw the whole kitchen!
 
The main benefit for Victorian business owners is that those with payroll up to $10 million can continue deferring payroll tax, and if you speak to any business in the eastern states they will say that payroll tax is something they dread.
 
This is a great boost for the local economy, especially with the end of JobKeeper and JobSeeker now just four months away, and the time getting closer for businesses to hold onto and hopefully put on more staff.
 
The recently announced Jobs Tax Credit initiative will run for the next two years and means that small and medium businesses that qualify will receive a 10-cent credit for every dollar of taxable wages if they keep staff on once Job Keeper support expires at the end of March, or if they re-employ them. That’s a great incentive to keep workers on, to increase hours, and to try and get more businesses moving again as we all try to continue the recovery from this year.
 
This combined with similar stimulus from the federal government and other state governments is all expected to add billions of dollars to the national economy, which is important as business owners are only likely to keep staff or employ new staff if they think there is going to be some kind of demand for them to service.
 
With local businesses in Victoria still very much in recovery mode, but getting more open every week, the state government also announced a $619 million ‘Jobs for Victoria’ program, as well as $250 million to support businesses through a six-month subsidy training young people and retrenched workers who have been long term unemployed. That’s a huge win for workers and business owners.
 
Now that businesses have opened their doors again and are getting back into the swing of things, it’s important to look at all these stimulus measures and see which could help your business moving forward, and take full advantage of them.