Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

The government will deliver a tax cut for around 3.2 million small and medium Australian businesses, employing over 6.5 million workers.

Company tax is a tax on workers, a tax on jobs and a tax on wages.

Small and medium Australian businesses with turnovers of less than $50 million a year will benefit.

This reform will deliver jobs and increase wages. It is an excellent outcome for Australian workers and their families.

Companies with a turnover of less than $10 million will receive a reduction in their tax rate (to 27.5%) this financial year.

All types of businesses benefit from these changes, including 2.3 million unincorporated businesses. 

This reform fully delivers in this term on a key election commitment. But the job is not over - we remain committed to delivering our full plan for economic growth and employment.

Earlier this week we passed the Diverted Profits Tax. By making sure multinational companies pay their fair share of tax, we can ensure the tax paid by small and medium enterprises is as low as possible.

Businesses and the people they employ are not the only beneficiaries of the package that passed the Senate this evening.

The Government will pursue additional measures to put downward pressure on energy prices, building on our existing policies.

Recognising that our energy reforms will take time to fully implement, we will provide a one-off payment of $75 for single recipients and $125 for couple recipients of the Aged Pension, the Disability Pension and the Parenting Payment.

The additional measures to tackle power prices include increasing gas supply, including a potential NT-SA pipeline, accelerating solar development, improving price transparency and a Productivity Commission inquiry to complement the ACCC review.

We thank the crossbench for its support. Unfortunately, once again, Labor let down businesses and the people they employ, voting against measures that will increase jobs and generate growth.

It is further evidence of the obvious: Bill Shorten has no plan for jobs and no plan to grow the economy.