QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator SCARR (Queensland) (15:19): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. The Labor government has kicked Australian small business in the guts. There is nothing clearer.

I've just come back from three weeks in Queensland, and that is what I'm hearing across the whole state of Queensland, from up in Weipa all the way down to Ipswich, where my office is based. Small business feels like it is under attack. The last budget that was brought down by this Labor government is exhibit A: changes to the tax system, which were never taken to the last election; changes to the way capital gains tax is levied; changes to the way negative gearing works, which is having a huge impact on the property sector, small and large; and changes to the taxation of discretionary trusts.

There were questions asked earlier today by Senator Nampijinpa Price in relation to the taxation of discretionary family trusts. The Labor government has been in damage control in relation to this issue since the budget. They hadn't done their homework.

They hadn't done their homework in relation to discretionary trusts, and these are trusts that are used by approximately 350,000 small businesses across Australia, from your local newsagent to farms. These are small businesses all over Australia. Discretionary family trusts are the vehicle that is being used by hundreds of thousands of small businesses.

The government, in its ham-fisted way of trying to change the taxation to apply to those discretionary trusts, is causing great damage. It's been estimated that the costs involved to address this toxic trust tax change imposed by the Labor government could cost small and family businesses across Australia up to $13.3 billion in restructuring and tax advice costs alone.

What the Labor government wants businesses to do is to change their corporate structure—change from a discretionary family trust structure, which they could have had in place for decades and decades, to some other structure. But there are costs involved in doing that. There's legal advice.

There's tax advice. There's stamp duty. And none of this was thought of by the Labor government, because they don't understand or don't care about small business.

That's the truth. It has been estimated that in my home state of Queensland it could cost a small business worth maybe $1.5 million up to $100,000 to restructure—that's nearly 10 per cent of the value of the business to restructure—as a result of these tax changes. That's dead money.

That's money which could have been reinvested in the business. That's money which could have gone to employing an additional employee—including a young person—in a business. It's dead money; it's an albatross around the neck of small business.

Now, we're even seeing the Australian Taxation Office chasing small businesses for inadvertent mistakes they made under certain family trust tax rules. That has led to small businesses being asked, in at least one case where they are owed $47,000 in tax, with the affliction of time, to pay $890,000. Some small business made an inadvertent mistake paying its tax decades ago, and the ATO has now increased that amount payable to $890,000.

Can you believe that? In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, it's outrageous.