my name is mike hawkins, i'm the executive officerof business enterprise centres australia. we are a national network of small businessadvisory centres helping in a low cost way people that are thinking about starting inbusiness or existing business owners. i'm joined tonight by a panel of experts and iwill introduce them to you, each one. my first person is from the ato and that'ssteve vesperman. steve is a deputy commissioner at the ato with responsibility for small businesstax payer's business line. steve's role involves significant interaction across governmentagencies and industry associations and the ato's role in all of this steve is to makesure that small business is assisted to meet their obligations with tax and superannuation.so welcome steve.
thank you mike. next we have dr michael schaper from the accc. michael is the deputy commissioner at theaustralian competition and consumer commission. he has a particular interest in small businessfranchising and industry associations in particular, michael works well with industry associationsliaising between them and his department to make sure that the dialogue is promoted inregards to national competition and consumer protection issues. so welcome michael. evening mike. from the australian securities and investmentscommission or asic, i welcome brett bassett.
brett is the queensland regional commissionerof asic, a role that he has held since 2011. brett is responsible for asic's engagementwith and regulation of small business. his team undertake compliance, surveillance andenforcement work in industry. welcome brett. thanks mike. good to be here. thank you. and from the fair work ombudsman's office, i welcome lynda mcalary-smith. lyndais the fair work ombudsman's executive director of proactive compliance and education. lyndaleads a branch that proactively assists australian workplaces by helping them to understand theirworkplace rights and obligations and lynda works across the whole department to makesure that small businesses first and foremost
with regards to the department's dealings.so welcome team. thanks mike. i'm going to throw to a few questions now and the first one i've got here is: what aregovernment agencies doing to assist start-up businesses? and i think i might throw to youfirst steve from an ato perspective, can you give us some outline there please? yeah, thanks mike and we recognise that when starting up a small business there are manythings to consider and one of the critical success factors is getting it right from thestart and the ato is very keen to provide
the assistance and support to ensure thatsmall business people can get it right from the start in relation to superannuation andtax arrangements. now we do this through our small businessassistance program and that's made up of a number of elements. we have a small businessassistant tool which is available on our website and it's also available on the ato app. byusing that tool you can key in particular questions, particularly related to startingup a small business and you get responses back from the information that's availableon our website. we also have a web chat facility available now through our contact centresor online through our ato.gov website where you can also key in questions and there'llbe someone in the office who will be able
to respond to the questions that you're asking.that web chat facility is available from three o'clock to nine o'clock, monday to fridayand it's also available on saturday. this recognises of course that small business peopledo not necessarily have time during the day to be sorting through particular issues inrelation to their obligations. we also have an after-hours phone facilityavailable so small business people can use a phone service where we call back those thatnominate for a call to be made after hours. so that facility is available for call backsystem from six o'clock til nine o'clock, monday to thursday. a very good system forassisting those people who need to undertake sort of enquiries after business hours. inaddition to that, on our website we have a
number of youtube videos available and theycover a range of subjects, most importantly they do talk about starting up a new business,but also record keeping tips and hints so that people when they're starting up a smallbusiness get their record keeping arrangements in place. so that's a very important sourceof information. we also partner with the business enterprise centres. mike hawkins: you do indeed. we do that in partnership around australiawhere we offer free tax-basic workshops and these are very keenly sought after and theyprovide a valuable information source for businesses who are starting up. we actuallyhave now a small business news room in place
that's run by us through our website and wedo encourage every small business person to subscribe to that small business news roombecause we are sending out information very particular to the small business communityon a regular basis. and it's done in such a way that it provides some headlines of theinformation that's available and then you can drill down further to get more informationif that's necessary. the other thing that i wanted to mention mikein wrapping up is that there is another source of information for small business people andregistered tax agents also can provide assistance to small business people and we do encouragethat, to use that as another avenue for information for those who are starting up a small business.
mike hawkins: excellent. thanks steven. i like that accessibility issue there with your staff beingavailable on weekends, i mean that's pretty good, pretty impressive. thank you steve.i'll throw over to brett now from asic. how are you handling this situation here? brett bassett: well thanks mike. i think it's important to note that from asic's perspective we recognisethat small businesses are actually our largest customer and i think that's really, reallyimportant. you know we've got roughly 3.8 million companies and business names registeredwith asic and of those 3.8 million, roughly 96% of them are businesses with twenty orfew or less employees. so it's important to
note from the outset that small business isactually our largest customer. our team that actually has the most interactionwith small business on a daily business is our registry team. and the registry team isprobably the place where most small businesses are going to get in contact with asic in thestart-up, in the start-up part of their actual moving into a business. and obviously oneof the first ways that they'll do that is through the business name process and sinceasic took over the business name process, you may be interested to note that you canactually do all your business name online registration via the web at a time that'ssuitable and convenient to you. and in the last financial year of the 327,000 new businessnames that were registered online, only thirty-six
actually didn't go online, so that demonstratesthat at start-up of a business people really are moving online. and of that 327,000 inthe last financial year, another interesting stat, is that 30% of those new business namesregistrations were done after hours. gets back to steve's point. we really acknowledgeand understand that small businesses need to have accessibility with us as regulatorsat a time that's convenient to them. obviously when people start to think aboutgoing to small business or any type of business, they may think, 'well where's the informationthat i can read or get access to?'. when we actually started looking at this from asmall business perspective a couple of years ago, we were told very, very definitivelyby small business that they couldn't read
the information that asic had on its websitebecause it was too voluminous. they didn't have time to actually sit there for hour uponhour and actually go through what the obligations were in starting up a business, so we listenedto them and what we've done is we've developed a small business hub. and that small businesshub is a single place on the asic website where you can get a whole range of guidessuch as starting up a business name, starting up a company, all the information that youneed about what it means to be a sole proprietor or a director of a small business from asic'sperspective. and we think that they're really, really important to help businesses and ownersof businesses really understand what their obligations are before they start up.and i'll talk about two other things as well.
our financial literacy team has a websitethrough money smart and we've got a fantastic tool that's available through the money smartwebsite and it's called asic's be money smart through a career in small business.now this resource will help small business owners actually improve their financial literacyand it also encourages people who are considering going into a small business to actually understandthe key issues, the concepts and the regulatory burdens that are actually imposed on smallbusinesses. and the final thing i'll talk about is a newtool that we put in place in july last year which actually helps small businesses protectthemselves. unfortunately there are a lot of small businesses that are scammed by otherpeople and other businesses, so what we thought
is if you're going into a small business forthe first time or you've been in a business for the first time and you want to just protectyourself, do some type of due diligence because unfortunately a lot of people don't necessarilyhave the skills or the financial means to actually do some type of due diligence. soasic developed a business checks app which actually helps small businesses go througha very, short, quick, succinct, due diligence process that will help them protect themselvesat the beginning of a start-up. so they're a couple of the key things for us. look i'm impressed, as with steve. you know listening to customers' questions and respondingand also that access again at all hours. so
good on you. accc, michael, you must havebeen doing some work in that area. indeed we have mike. in fact if you talk aboutlistening to customers, in some senses if you think about it, when you start a businessyou've got some regulatory requirements such as dealing with the tax office and dealingwith asic but in addition to that there's also some issues you've got to think aboutjust in a practical sense. what's your relationship going to be between yourself and your suppliers?how are you going to treat your customers? how are you going to market to them? and whatsort of relationships are you going to strike up and how are you going to deal with otherbusinesses that are also competing against you? so that throws up a whole bunch of questionsthat you probably want to think about and
which unfortunately the rules aren't quitenecessarily as clear cut as they might be about how you pay tax or how you registera company but they're still really important. and they're things such as how do i set myprice? for example can i use the recommended retail price? what are the rules about advertising?what can i say and what can't i say? what are the issues about my relationships withsuppliers? does someone have to supply products to me if i ask them to do it? and what aboutmy customers? if they want a refund, do i have to give it to them? how am i supposedto deal with things such as complaints? and finally, as brett mentioned, the ever presentthreat of scams which loom all the time in the background for businesses.now the accc's got another online device,
we've got a few online programs happeninghere tonight, this one's called cca education programs and you can actually walk yourselfthrough each of those issues as well as a few other ones that are emerging on the horizonas well. so that's a useful starting tool and it's very much geared to the start-upbusiness. thanks mike. and look, thank you. and it's nice to seethe accc's already up there as well with some of these walk through programs so that peoplecan actually educate themselves at any time of the day or night.michael schaper: absolutely. great work. lynda i haven't forgotten youfrom fair work ombudsman. i know you've got some contribution to make to this discussion.over to you.
absolutely. we're very much playing in theonline space at the moment and last year we launched our fairwork.gov.au website withinformation specifically tailored for small businesses. where small businesses, if theyare starting up for the first time or perhaps are taking on an employee for the first time,can actually jump onto our website and go in and select information that's tailoredto the very specific industry that they're working in so that they can know that they'regetting the information that's right for them and for their industry.when a small business is starting up or taking on a new employee or perhaps a first employee,one of the most important things they can do at that early stage is as steve said before,about getting off on the right foot right
from the start. so that includes making consciousdecisions about what kind of employer do you want to be, what are your expectations ofstaff, how are you going to do the right thing by your staff and get the most out of them.we have some great resources available at fairwork.gov.au including an online learningcentre, we have one of those as well which has been very popular and we've had over twenty-fivethousand people actually go in and complete a number of the courses in that space whereyou can go in and take interactive courses with role-plays around topics such as havingdifficult conversations or hiring someone for the first time. hiring someone for thefirst time can be really quite daunting but it is hopefully an exciting opportunity fora business, but it's important that you invest
the time to get it right in the first instance.we also hold a number of compliance and education campaigns for small businesses every yearacross the country, going out into regional areas, working in metropolitan areas and helpingsmall businesses get it right in the first place. and the other thing we do mike is workwith intermediaries with registered tax agents, with hr professionals or with local businessadvisors to help them help their clients get the right advice right from the start. mike hawkins: great. look i'm most impressed again by the whole panel and lynda thank you for that.again you are showing that your staff at your agency is out there working with people, thatyou're not sitting behind a desk and you've
got access again all hours by your website.panel, i'd like to now throw to another question here and that is how are government agenciesassisting small businesses to thrive in the marketplace? and can i ask michael schaperfrom the accc. over to you michael, can you give me some comments on that please? thanks mike. one of the big issues coming up and i think every business operator needsto think about this over the next year is the introduction of so called unfair contractterms. this is something that's going to affect not only goods and services, it's also goingto affect financial services and it's something that the both the accc and asic are goingto have a hand in getting involved with and
policing. now it's wending its way throughthe courts so this is very much news coming rather than necessarily settled at the momentbut watch this space. what's an unfair contract? it's pretty simplereally. i think almost all of us at some time or another have either hired a car, we'vebooked a plane ticket, we've taken out a gym membership, and certainly most of us havecertainly taken out a phone or an internet access contract. now all of those are basicallywhat we think of as standard form contracts, they're pretty much take it or leave it. youget them plonked in front of you and you really get one or two choices, you can sign it oryou can leave it alone. and it really is something where you don't have a capacity to negotiate.for several years now for consumers, you and
i as members of the general public, if thatis offered to us by a business, in other words a business to consume a contract, any termthat is in there that is regarded as unfair can be struck out. now an unfair term isn'tsomething for example 'i don't like the price of it'. but it's rather something that fallsinto the sort of the category that is, it's not really necessary for the business to imposethat term, it creates a big imbalance between the consumer and the business, usually obviouslytilted in favour of the business that's offering it and if it was ever exercised would usuallycause the customer to suffer some sort of loss or what we might think of us as a detriment.now for several years that's been applied for business to consumer contracts. the intentionnow is that that will apply to business to
business dealings. so if you're a small businessand you're offered a standard contract, and you can think of a number of them they mightbe for contracts or sub-contracting work for example, you've got with a larger firm, itmight in regards to leasing or real estate it might be in a whole variety of differentareas. if you're a small business that is you know less than twenty staff and the contract'sworth less than $100,000 or less than quarter of a million dollars if it goes over morethan a year then potentially this will also provide some protection for you. if a courtfinds that the term is unfair then that part of the contract, not the whole contract butjust that part, will be struck out. so what it will see i think is a couple ofquestions. first of all you might want to
start asking, are the standard form contractsthat i'm being asked to sign by another business, are they fair? and the second one is, arethe contracts that i in turn are offering other businesses, indeed am i offering themfair as well? so it's going to be a bit of a two edge sword. it's also something thatasic are going to have a hand involved in as well. mike hawkins: yes and thank you for that michael. and look asic does have a role to play in that, andthank you for that very informative discussion about what's coming up. brett could you giveus a bit of an idea of what asic's involvement is going to be on this?brett bassett: yeah sure. as michael said, we will certainly be working very closely with the accc in respectof actually not only educating small businesses
but actually enforcing the law when it doescome in. and i think it's fair to say that that will include from an educative perspective,talking at conferences, talking at events, getting around to small businesses doing sometype of online education program no doubt, as well as using what we call a facilitativeapproach in respect of enforcing the law. and the facilitative approach generally involvesactually getting out and checking for compliance where people may not necessarily have thecompliance right, educating them to make sure that they are aware of what the complianceobligations are and then when necessary, when in fact appropriate, taking some type of enforcementaction if somebody does get it wrong. but i think it's fair to say mike that we willbe working very, very closely with the accc.
mike hawkins: and look thank you very much for that brett. and i do like both michael and brett they've said that they're going to work people throughthis so it's not going to be a heavy-handed approach, it's going to be a consultativeand educational process. so thank you both for that. the minister mentioned in his introductionhere particular interest in franchising matters and i'd like to just have a little bit ofa discussion about that if i may. and i think michael probably back to you on franchising.i know you have a particular interest in this area. michael schaper: we certainly do and in fact as minister billson mentioned at his introduction to this session,the accc has a responsibility for looking after what's called the franchising code ofconduct. now that's a mandatory code that
applies to anyone involved in franchisingright around this country and it basically covers three aspects. some rules about ifyou're thinking about going into franchise, what information you're entitled to receive,you're entitled to a cooling off period, making sure that you have all the facts and whatwe sometimes call due diligence before you get started. in addition to the start-up,it also looks at what happens during the life of the franchise agreement, for example ifthere's a dispute between the franchisor and the franchisee, how can we settle that effectively?and finally it also gives franchisees certain rights when a franchise comes to an end asthey usually do after a certain time period. for example, am i allowed to renew the franchise?am i allowed to strike out on my own but basically
selling the same sort of products? now franchising'sgone through bit of a review in the last two years and last year we saw the introductionof a new franchising code. essentially most of the big picture conditions remain the samebut there are some important things that are worth noting.there are now serious financial penalties that attach to breaches some parts of thefranchising code, so that gives the accc some more teeth to police the code. franchisorsand franchisees are also now obliged to act in what we think of as good faith which meansthat when you're dealing with each other you've got to do it honestly, you've got to thinkabout the needs and the concerns of the other party and you've got to give them time tohave their side of the story heard to you.
it doesn't mean you can't do and follow yourown legitimate commercial interest but you've got to think about the needs of the otherside as well. there's increased disclosure about marketing funds as well mike and a varietyof other measures. importantly in this day and age for the first time it also specificallysays that you have to spell out in franchise agreement, what happens to online sales, whichas we all know whether you're talking about pizzas, fast food, clothing or even cars thatalso can be sold through an online franchise system. mike hawkins: absolutely, it's a real pandora's box i guess. thank you very much for that michael. andlook going over to fair work ombudsman, lynda, there's a lot of franchise to consider, alot of franchisees, franchisors, what's the
fwo going to be doing about this?lynda mcalary-smith: certainly. at the fair work ombudsman we recognise that franchisees employ a large number ofaustralians and picking up on michael's point about the relationship between the franchisorand the franchisee, we're particularly interested in how the franchisors can support franchisesto make sure that they're paying their employees correctly. i'll say firstly that the vastmajority of businesses in this country, particularly small businesses are doing the right thingby their employees and they're paying them correctly. we do however see in some industrieswhich tend to be franchised that when profits get tight for a whole range of reasons oneof the things that businesses can choose to contract around their costing is labour costsand one of the really important things there
is making sure that they're doing that appropriatelyand lawfully. so we've been working with franchisors andfranchisees in a number of ways, mike, so we run a national franchise program and wehave done for the last couple of years where we actually work with the franchisors aboutsupporting them to support their franchisees to make sure that they understand what theirworkplace obligations are particularly around rates of pay, overtime on weekends, if youare needing to vary hours in the like, that's really important that they're doing the rightthing. we've also been working with franchisors and franchisees where we have come acrossissues of non-compliance where people are not getting paid correctly and we're now movingmore into the space of sitting down with franchisors
and getting them to take us through theirbusiness model and making some assessments around, for example, is the business modelset up fairly to be able to ensure that the workers at the end of the day can get paidtheir money? and we'll be increasingly looking to franchisorsto take more responsibility for the business models that they choose which picks up onmichael's point about the code, about treating the franchisee and franchisor, treating eachother effectively fairly. we have a number of resources available in terms of our websiteat fairwork.gov.au that i mentioned before and we also have our dedicated small businesshelpline that's available at 13 13 94 for small business operators and we're particularlykeen to hear from franchisees if they are
having any difficulties because we are hereto help. thank you lynda. and again there's a contactnumber there, open all hours i would imagine, or is that sort of limited?lynda mcalary-smith: yes, it's during business hours australian eastern standard times but our website isavailable twenty-four seven. mike hawkins: absolutely. so if there's possibilities of connecting with fair work ombudsman and thank you for the great work that you're doing there lynda andi think it's a work in progress but it's certainly a work that has to be done. so thank you verymuch for that. now steve. i haven't forgotten about you. can i just ask what the ato isdoing to implement new government initiatives that assist small business?steve verperman: yes mike. the minister actually summarised
the key points of the small business packagethat was announced in the federal budget of 2015 in may and i will just go into a coupleof those in some detail, but we are very keen to ensure that small business people understandtheir entitlements from the packages and the various elements. so it is very importantthat if you're looking for more detail other than what i cover here to use our ato.govwebsite to get that additional information. but the first one is the $20,000 instant assetwrite-off, so that applies to purchases from the 12 may where those purchases are firstused or installed by 30 june 2017. that applies to both new and second-hand goods, that couldbe vehicles, machinery, furniture but again looking for more detail it is available onour website. it also is something that is
claimed on the income tax return that is lodgedat the end of the financial year. now from the 1 july the tax rates for smallbusiness corporate entities has changed from30% to 28.5% for those small business corporateentities that have a turnover of less than $2 million and also for unincorporated smallbusinesses there's a tax offset of 5% against the tax liability which is related to small businessincome up to a maximum of a thousand dollars which will be applied at the time the incometax return is lodged and the assessment is made. once again we will do the calculationsonce we receive the information on the income tax return for that concession to be provided.and finally there's start-up costs for small business. one of the elements of the packagewas that certain start-up expenses associated
with starting up a business including costsassociated with raising capital, which would otherwise be deductable over a five year periodand now able to be deducted in the first year. so that's again another change to the incometax legislation related to small business and costs and deductions.there's two other measures that i won't go into detail but if you're looking for moreinformation about it, go to our website. that's changes to the employee share scheme arrangementand also as the minister mentioned, the small business rollover concessions that are availablenow as well. mike hawkins: excellent. thanks steve. no wonder the minister was so excited. it is really interesting times and exciting times for small business andato is one of the lead agencies in that. so
thank you steve. i'd like to ask, and theminister mentioned this in his introduction about cutting red tape. what does that meanin practical terms for business people? and i guess the first person i'm going to askabout that is brett from asic. have you got a red tape reduction policy? brett bassett: let me start mike by sayingthat from asic's perspective we see that red tape is anythingthat unnecessarily increases the compliance cost or the regulatory burden on small businessesand we certainly do take our responsibility as the minister articulated to reduce thecost of red tape to the australian business community. and every day we actually takesteps to do that.
for example, asic administers a number ofdifferent laws and pieces of legislation and we on a daily basis provide wavers from thelaw where we think that the compliance with that law may actually create an unnecessaryburden on the business that's actually needing to comply with that law. so that's one waythat we certainly do seek to reduce red tape. we've also recently released our regulatedperformance framework which will see asic actually having to report on an annual basisabout the steps that it takes to actually reduce red tape. so getting back to the questionabout the policy, that's probably the document that clearly articulates where we will befocused on reducing red tape and importantly we will be held accountable to that on anannual basis.
we also recognise that small businesses don'tnecessarily have a lot of time to comply with the law or to actually engage with asic sowhat we're doing is we're moving a lot of our forms online and we think that's a reallyimportant way of actually reducing red tape. as i talked about before business name registrationis a clear example where it's a lot easier to actually engage with asic et cetera. andwe've also recently enhanced the asic website. i spoke before about small businesses needingto understand the information that asic provides to them, we've updated our asic website tomake it a lot easier and simpler for businesses to actually find information and that's another area. and finally another key initiative for usrelates to a whole of government initiative
that asic is a part of with the australiantaxation office as well as the department of industry and science which is a singleonline registration portal for business names and companies moving forward. that's anotherway that we're working across the whole of government to actually decrease the regulatoryand compliance burdens on small businesses. thank you brett. i'm hearing simplification,ease of use, accessibility, all great things to reduce that burden on time-poor small businesses.so thank you brett. and i'll move on to lynda from fair work ombudsman because i know thatyou're doing some exciting work there. we are indeed. we likewise are working towardsthe regulatory framework of reducing red tape and we've been implementing a number of initiativesrecently to do our best to cut that. so in
a number of ways what we've really done isbrought small business into our co-design of initiatives and compliance policies thatwe have within the organisation. so we're getting small business people actually tocome in and help us design what services they actually need which is so instrumental infiguring out what's actually causing them the most amount of annoyance when they'rehaving to deal with organisations such as regulators. we've relaunched our website as i mentioned earlier and our website over fourteen millionvisits last year, so there's some great information that's available there. what we're endeavouringto do is provide information in a time that suits small businesses or their advisors sothat they can access it when and where they
want. we've also have a number of templateswhich are available on our website around record keeping, letters of employment, contracts,requests for flexible work arrangements, return to work rights and requests around parentalleave for example. we've also launched our hiring guide which i mentioned earlier whichis designed to really cut the costs associated with hiring people by providing a guided frameworkfor doing that, so you don't need to actually go out and secure a recruitment company tohelp you to do that, but you can do it right and it also helps you get the right person, which will hopefully minimise any issues down the track.we've also worked really hard at the front end of our business as a regulator about reformingthe way that we deal with small businesses
and employees when they come to us with anissue or they're responding to an issue. we now work very closely with businesses aroundmediations and trying to resolve things at an early point in a dispute before thingsexplode out to a certain degree, so we have online, telephone, we've got online servicesavailable, we have telephone mediations to help employers and employees navigate someof these trickier issues themselves and we're continuing to reform the way we do businessso that we can cut the time that business needs to worry about workplace relations sothat workplace relations compliance can be something that bubbles away in the backgroundrather than needing to be at the forefront of their mind.
wow. thank you lynda. i'm most impressed by the number of website hits that your organisationgets, that's fantastic. lynda mcalary-smith: i'm shamelessly spruiking it as you can see. it segues into my nice question i'm going to stick with you on this. how will goingonline assist my business from the fair work ombudsman's perspective? absolutely. as i've been mentioning quite a bit tonight, we have a number of resourcesavailable on our website. we're also continuing to evolve the way that we interact with smallbusinesses and we're in the process of designing
service delivery in a more online way so thatbusinesses will be able to access our services and make requests for our help through anonline space. we recently launched a new paying conditions tool which takes the number ofcalculations that sit within 122 different modern awards that apply to different industriesacross the country. and we've done all the hard yards of the calculations for small businessesand their advisors so that now small businesses can just jump onto our website, access thattool and go through and work out what they need to pay their staff on any given hourof the day. you can save information in there, it givesyou entitlements around leave and the like, we've also instituted an authenticated portal,if you like, within our website called my account
where people can set up a profile and cansave information, bookmark pages, request alerts when there are changes so that businessesif they need to dip in and dip out of information they can save where they're up to, which isa really powerful tool for cutting some of the time that they have to spend in this space.so we're continuing to do more work in this space. we're excited by what we've been ableto achieve at the moment but importantly we're working with small businesses and their advisorsto make sure that the decisions we make in the online space fit what they need not whatwe think they need. mike hawkins: excellent. thanks lynda. and again you've explained it very succinctly how businesses can really benefit by going online with thefair work ombudsman and do a lot of business
and interactions online. get a lot more information.steve, the ato is also not shy in having an online presence. can you indicate how businessescan benefit by going online with the ato? as you say mike there's enormous potentialfor small business in using the online services not only to help form their business perspectivebut also to access their many services that are available through government agenciesand other service providers. and the ato is certainly leading the way as we see it interms of providing those services, so we do have those calculators and tools online thatpeople can access to help in terms of finding out information and that's available not onlythrough our ato.gov website but it's also available through the new ato small businessapp. and we are encouraging small business
people to download that free app because there'sa whole range of services that you can access through that app.one of the important initiatives that we've also undertaken at the moment is what we call'voice authentication' and this is about using a voice sort of, voice print that we recordand then when you need to contact the office again and talk about your specific tax mattersyou only need to use your voice as a voice printer to check your proof of identity, whereasat the moment those people who haven't got the voice authentication protocol in place,they need to go through a proof of identity process. so we're trying to find ways of minimisingthe costs for small business people in interacting with the ato.another exciting initiative that's coming
up is that for those sole traders who've gota mygov account we will be actually making business activity statements available throughthe mygov account and you'll be able to use that online service to receive, lodge andpay your business activity statement and instalment activity statement obligations. so that'sa great new initiative as well. so at the end of the day we are exploring a whole rangeof ways to use those online services to assist small business and we've got lots of initiativesin the pipeline that we'll be deploying over the next couple of years.mike hawkins: excellent, look forward to that steve. that sounds great. i'm going to ask brett from asic what you're doing in the online area. well if we're talking online we can't nottalk about social media and our registry business
is really leading the way for asic in respectof our online interaction with small business and businesses generally. we've got a facebookaccount, we've got a twitter account, we've actually got a youtube channel and we thinkthat each of those is really important to help get information out to businesses ata time that's convenient and accessible for them. within the interaction sphere, we're actually looking at introducing webchat next year whichwould actually from our perspective be a really exciting way for small businesses to interactwith asic on a regular basis and at a time that's suitable to them. we're obviously very,very focused on making sure that we tie into the whole of government initiatives andwe've recently enhanced the ability for us
to make free data more accessible via thedata.gov.au website and we think that that's a really, really important point.when we talk about small businesses unfortunately some small businesses do end up closing downand so what we recognised is that when those businesses do close down sometimes they actuallywant to reinstate or start up again. so to actually help with that we recently introducedan online reinstatement estimates tool and this online calculator is actually a meansby which you as a small business owner, before you actually make a decision to actually reinstatethe company, can get an idea of how much it's going to cost you. and we think that that'sa really important way to help small business owners actually make decisions that are importantto them.
we've engaged with the ato-led small businessfix-it squad, which is a fantastic initiative, and as a direct result of some feedback fromthat squad, one of our online business names transfer processes was changed to make ita lot easier and more simpler and streamlined to actually help small businesses in the saleand transfer process. i've already spoken about business names but we've got a brilliantasic connect website that is all about engaging with business names and the company namesprocess that allows businesses to register business names, to renew the registrationof a business name, to cancel or transfer a business name and of course to update anytype of business name as well. and everything else we're doing at asic is trying to moveonline as much as possible. so we have a range
of different tools that are available onlinemike and we absolutely recognise that as businesses go online we need to keep up to date withwhere they are. mike hawkins: great. thanks for being so contemporary brett at asic. accc, now michael we hear a lot, most people know what accc is and we're largely guided by those topical news events and news breaks but what are you doing online?michael schaper: yeah it's not all about petrol which is not really something you can really put online.actually the really interesting thing i think mike, first off is that about 92% of australia'ssmall businesses are online but it throws up a real challenge, if you're one of the8% that aren't you really need to listen in to what's going on here and the sort of adviceand the labour saving sort of tools that are
being offered about whether or not you goonline as well. from our point of view there's probably two issues that i want to mentionto you and i don't want to scare you but i think they're ones that you need think about.the first one is about online scams. we run scamwatch, the national scam reporting website,that's scamwatch.gov.au and i can assure you that that is a legitimate url. but we getmore than 80 or 90 thousand contacts a year and one of our biggest groups are small businessoperators and increasingly small businesses are victims to scammers and in fact sometimesmore frequently than members of general public. so it's an issue that you need to keep yourselfup to date with and there's really simple tools, for example backing up your system,keeping the storing and copying offline to
make sure you don't fall victim to ransomware,using basic security tools are really important and will augment the sort of things we'retalking about here. the other issue that businesses come to usabout online trading is are the rules different in the online environment to when you're dealingwith a customer or another business physically, and the short answer is no. you've got tobe really careful about that relationship and we see a lot of situations where businessesfall into difficulties, for example, they don't make it clear to a customer that they'reoffering a different price, for example online as opposed to across the counter. fake onlinereviews are increasingly one that's a little bit of a concern for businesses, if you findyour competitors for example posting nasty
reviews about you and you're thinking that'sreally not the case. as well as just what are the generals: whatcan i say online and what can't i say online? so i'm going to shameless plug like my colleagueshere and mention our url which is accc.gov.au and you can find, like everyone else can,information about some of those online courses that we mentioned before so as to educateyourself about some of those issues whether it be franchising, whether it be unfair businesscontracts, whether it be scams or whether it be fake online reviews. as well as thatwe've also got the usual array of material downloadable publications and so forth. that'sprobably enough. look, i could listen to you all day, michael.that was fantastic stuff and again very well
put and very informative for small businessthat accc has a really excellent website as all of our agency partners here. please availyourself of the resources that are on those websites. so thank you panel for those, answeringthose questions that arose from the minister's presentation. we now have time for some questions that have been coming through while the webinar hasbeen running, and thank you to people that have called in. i will just preface beforei go to the panel with individual questions that we won't be able to get through all ofthem this evening, we only have a limited amount of time but i am informed that allenquiries will be answered in due course. so please if you don't get your question answeredtonight, the agency concerned will get back
to you. so let's have a look at some of thequestions that are coming through and one to you first steve and this is from omcar.and omcar has said, how does she go about lodging a bas online? can you give us a bitof information about that? yes there's for a sole trader who has a mygovaccount, your next activity statement will be available online. so to actually be ableto lodge it online, first of all you need a mygov account, you need to be a sole traderand then you will be able to use that facility at the time of your next activity statement.for those who are an incorporated entity that functionality through the mygov account willnot be available until later on this financial year. however if you use the auskey credentialand you sign up to the auskey credential and
that arrangement, you are able to receiveand lodge activity statements online as well. more information about that is available onour website. mike hawkins: excellent. thank you steve. and hopefully that answers the question but there is more information online. i have another questionnow, from tracy, and it's to asic, to you brett, the question is, 'phoenix' seems to be a hottopic at the moment. can you explain what's been done about it? and maybe what it is?brett bassett: sure. thanks for that question, tracy. phoenix, for those that don't know, is very much whereone company goes into liquidation, the directors of that company move the assets of the firstcompany into the second company and the reason that they do that is basically to deny thecreditors of the first company access from
those assets. unfortunately from a phoenix perspective,small businesses are often the ones who are the victims of phoenix. why is it a big issue?it costs roughly 3.2 billion dollars a year and that was a result of a report that wasdone back in 2012. and so phoenix is a huge issue. agencies like the fair work ombudsman,the ato, asic, the accc and the australian federal police are very much focused on phoenix activity. so what are agencies like asic doing? wellwe're being very proactive in respect of five key area, five key industries: the constructionsector, the labour hire sector, the cleaning sector, the security sector and the transportsector. and what we're doing is we're going out and targeting those directors who arestill involved in companies, legitimate companies
who have a history of illegal phoenix activity.we're actually going out doing surveillance visits of them, doing compliance checks ofthem and then reminding them of their obligations and interestingly in the work that we've doneat asic over the last eighteen months or so, we've identified seven live instances of illegalphoenix activity. of those five we've got charges issued in respect of one person, we'vereferred two matters over to the ato. the other thing i'll say is that there isan inter-agency phoenix taskforce that is led by the ato and that phoenix taskforcethat came into effect in november last year has been put together to enhance the informationsharing arrangements between the agencies so that we can actually engage at a more collaborativeand a more strategic level. so there are a
couple of key points.mike hawkins: yeah. thank you very much for that comprehensive answer, brett, and that, i hope, really answersthe question that was raised and thank you for that again too. i have a question nowfor michael at accc and cathy has said is there anyone that small business can contactto check whether contracts contain unfair contract terms?michael schaper: it's an interesting question, cathy. as i mentioned before when i was talking aboutunfair contract terms, this is still a piece of law that hasn't yet been passed by parliamentso something that's still yet to be enacted and so we're basing on this answer i guess onthe proposition that it is going to be passed. essentially if you think that something isan unfair contract term, the accc can give
you generalised advice, and that's what we'repreparing at the moment, but you ultimately if you think you are in an unfair contractsituation you do need to go and see your own legal advisor. the situation with the acccis a little bit different to the tax office in many cases, the tax office in many situationscan give what are called binding private rulings and i've got that right, steve?steve vesperman: that's right. where a taxpayer can say these are my situationand provided all those are correct then the tax office will give them effectively someguidance and they can follow that with a fair degree of comfort. the accc doesn't have eitherthe legal capacity to do that, nor is it always as easy to work out the situation of everycontract or every business-to-business relationship
that quickly. so ultimately you need to goand talk to your own advisor. that's a bit of a long answer, mike, i think it's an importantissue that a lot of the advice that comes from the government, some of it can be specificbut a lot of the times you are going to need to follow it up, making sure you talk to someonewho's got a legal background, who can give you professional advice for your situation.mike hawkins: absolutely. it's a complex area. and thank you michael for that very sage advice on that.fair work ombudsman question. rob, who's an accountant, has asked, lynda, what does hedo if one of his clients is not paying their staff their proper entitlements?lynda mcalary-smith: that's a great question, mike. so thanks for reaching out, rob, first of all. you've gota wonderful opportunity to try and help your
client set things right, right at this pointin time. so i'd encourage you to work with your client to fix up what the issues areand as i've been talking a lot today, there are a lot of resources available on our websitethat can help you do that. we also have our dedicated small business hotline on 13 13 94that can help you work through any particular tricky issues. it's really important as anaccountant and a trusted advisor to your client to help them work through this.these sorts of issues rarely go away. we recently had a matter where due to a minor computerglitch a business was exposed to underpayments worth several hundred thousands of dollarsbecause it had compounded over years, so it's great that you've picked it up now but it'simportant to fix it up. as an accountant and
to other advisors who might be watching todayas well, it's a great opportunity to make sure you're giving the best possible adviceto your clients and that could include you seeking advice as well. workplace relationscan be a complex area so if you're not certain of the advice that you're being asked to provide,make sure that as michael said perhaps you refer your client on to a legal advisor oryou send your client or you contact us for that advice.it's really important and particularly in relation to the accountancy profession, we'recontinuing to work very closely with the key organisations in this area because from timeto time we do see clients of ours who've run into trouble because they've received theincorrect advice from their accountant. so
i applaud you for getting on the front footto help them and i encourage you to help them fix it up and to others who are watching,a similar approach to your clients would be beneficial because moving forward, we're goingto be taking a closer look at the role that accountants in particular play when providingadvice to their clients and making sure that it's correct. mike hawkins: thank you lynda and thank you rob for an excellent question there. it's a difficult area. thankyou for being brave enough to bring it up. i would like to extend the questions but unfortunatelywe're on limited time here. so i do need to just remind you again that questions thathaven't been answered tonight will be addressed by the agency concerned. everybody who hasasked a question will have a response made
to it, but unfortunately that's the only timethat we have for questions. i now need to just ask our panel members to just give usa summation of their agency offerings and what they're doing and i'll start with brett,over to you from an asic point of view. thank you mike. i haven't used the asic websiteyet so asic.gov.au is the asic website and on the asic website are a whole range of toolsincluding the small business hub, of course asic connect, we've also got a wonderful websitecalled money smart with a whole range of tools there. i'll just start to finish by sayingasic is very, very focused on listening to small business. we've changed a lot of whatwe do as a result of direct small business feedback. we will continue to engage withsmall business and we're actually very, very
much focused on listening to what you wantus to do better. so that's it from me, thank you mike. mike hawkins: thank you. thank you brett. over to you, lynda from a fair work ombudsman's perspective. i would say to everyone watching, don't be scared to contact us. although we are theregulator, we are here to help you get it right and that includes if you realise you'vebeen doing the wrong thing as well. so if there are issues don't hesitate to contactus on our website of fairwork.gov.au or on our small business helpline of 13 13 94. youhave a wonderful opportunity not just to meet the minimum standards but to help grow yourbusiness or grow your clients' business by working above the line if you like and wehave a lot of resources available on our websites
such as courses around managing underperformance,which is always tricky for everybody, and as i've mentioned before, hiring, our hiringguide as well. so we would encourage businesses to seek out that information, there is a lotof information available on our website and through our fair work inspectors and our fairwork infoline advisors who answer our helpline. so please don't hesitate to come to us andwe're here to help you. mike hawkins: thank you lynda. from an accc perspective, michael? simple one. as a business you've got rightsas well as responsibilities and although we spend a lot of time talking about responsibilitiesyou've also got rights. for example under the competitions and consumer act in certainsituations businesses can come together and
collectively bargain. as a small businessyou've got rights the same as consumers when you're buying certain products under a certainvalue and so on and so forth. the accc website is the starting point, just as all of theseagencies' websites are, accc.gov.au, 1300 302 021. we'd love to hear from you.mike hawkins: excellent. and final word from you, steve from the ato. thanks mike. and following on what lynda said, i sometimes hear that people are reluctantto call the ato, but i really encourage people to contact us. we are investing increasinglyour investment in our support and assistance we're providing to the small business communityand i encourage you to contact us and test us out in terms of that assistance and supportbecause i think in working in partnership,
we are keen to ensure small business thriveand the more we can do to assist with that then i think the better outcomes for everyone.i'd just like to wrap up and follow up what michael said about scams as currently there'sa scam under way where people pretend to be from the tax office and are demanding, with threats, money. i can assure you that we do not make phone calls where we are threatening and demandingmoney and if you do get a call that you are concerned about in any way, i encourage youto get their name and extension number of the person calling you, then use the phonenumber in the phone directory to call the ato and ask to be put through to that person.it's very important that people are aware of the scams that are under way at the moment.mike hawkins: thank you very much steve,
and that last point's very much a point of contention so if you are aware as steve said, please get in touch with ato and just advise them. there'sbeen a common thread running through the whole evening and that is that all the agenciesare approachable. talk to us, they're listening. become involved. look at the websites, youcan do that twenty-four hours a day. some of the information platforms there where yourequire, where you may want to speak to a person are there for extended hours. all ofthe agencies are doing their utmost to make sure that they're approachable so that youas a small business in australia can start off right and actually be of benefit to society,benefit to all of your employees, contribute back to the system and the agencies here canalso assist you to do your best. look ladies
and gentlemen, thank you very much to listeningto us this evening and i'd just like to say to all of our panel members as steve, michael,brett and lynda, thank you very much for your very valuable contribution to tonight's discussionabout small business and how agencies can assist them to be better. thank you very much.thank you.
