Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has made some changes to the JobKeeper wage program.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
While broadly welcomed by the business community with more than 400,000 formally enrolling in the scheme this week,there have been a series of complaints about its structure and operation.
They include pressures on small businesses to find a month's worth of wage payments upfront,much higher wages for almost 1.7 million part-time workers,rules governing charities and even the structure of firms.
Accountants have discovered many firms have their employees listed in separate companies that fail the JobKeeper requirement to suffer a 30 per cent fall in income for operations with less than $1 billion revenue.
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Mr Frydenberg said on Friday that in order to protect the integrity and efficient operation of JobKeeper,a separate fall in turnover test would be created for firms that use a special purpose entity to employ their staff rather than being directly employed.
The new test will include combined GST turnovers of the companies that use the entity which employs a firm's staff.
The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age revealed this week concern even within businesses about the flat $1500 wage subsidy as it applied to young people earning a small amount of money. They would be paid the $1500 fortnight under the government's original design even if they were receiving less than $100. That has been now changed.