It’s always nice to have over-estimated, right? Well, no.
What happened?
A recent announcement by the Government has advised of an accounting error in relation to the number of businesses claiming the JobKeeper payment. It has been put down to the ATO relying of business-owners to accurately input their own claim data. Confusion during the registration process has resulted in a huge miscalculation; when asked the number of employees the business would be claiming JobKeeper for, many small business owners have entered ‘1500’ – this being the amount of the claim – instead of ‘1’ for 1 employee.
It has so far been estimated that over 1000 small businesses have therefore registered to receive 1499 extra claims. The Government has been quick to point out that this has NOT resulted in over-payments, only an “over-budgeting” issue.
Whilst this is good from the point of view that Australia does not need to go into as much debt as previously thought, the BIG problem with this inaccuracy is the knock-on effect; many of the Government’s other measures were based upon these numbers which now brings the whole debt recovery plan into question.
Source: News.com article 22 05 2020. Click to read the full article here.
Confusion during registration process
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