Pay us to collect the SG, says small business
Small businesses should be compensated for undertaking their superannuation guarantee (SG) responsibilities because they are currently going unrecompensed for doing the job of the Commonwealth, according to the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia (COSBOA).
The lobby group has used a submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee to not only back the Government’s proposed amnesty for businesses who have fallen behind on their SG obligations but to also argue that the superannuation industry should be paying small businesses for undertaking SG administrative work.
The submission said that COSBOA was proposing that businesses that remitted their superannuation payments on time received a 10 per cent rebate from the superannuation industry for the effort and time spent.
In doing so it cited an agreement between big retailer Woolworths and the Shop Distributive and Allied Trades Union (SDA) via which the retailer collected union membership fees from employees and rebated 10 per cent of those fees back to Woolworths.
“These large organisations have worked out that the cost of processing payments equates to 10 per cent of money collected. This formula shows that the cost to business of collecting superannuation is over $5 billion per year,” the COSBOA submission said.
“In summary, the amnesty must be applied and communicated through all processes available to the small business community,” it said. “But to ensure we no longer need amnesties business must be taken out of the collection system or be remunerated for the work they do.”
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