Employer assistance

Bosses will be able to claim $200 each week for every employee hired after Wednesday aged between 16 and 29, and $100 each week for every employee aged between 30 and 35.

Employees will also need to:

• Have been on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance or the Parenting Payment for at least one of the past three months
• Begin working at the claiming business between October 7, 2020 and October 6, 2021
• Work an average of at least 20 hours a week over the reporting period

Lump sum payments

As part of further support for people not in work, the Government will offer two more tax-free payments of $250 to pensioners and others on government support.

The full list includes people on the:

• Age Pension
• Disability Support Pension
• Carer Payment
• Family Tax Benefit, including Double Orphan Pension (not in receipt of a primary income support payment)
• Carer Allowance (not in receipt of a primary income support payment)
• Pensioner Concession Card holders (not in receipt of a primary income support payment)
• Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders
• Eligible Veterans’ Affairs payment recipients and concession card holders

The payments will roll out in November, followed by a second installment early next year.

Superannuation

Thie Federal Budget has made enhancements to the super system to ensure your super is working harder for you.

These are summarised below:

• From 1 July 2021, you will keep your super fund when you change jobs, stopping the creation of unintended multiple super accounts and the erosion of your super balance.
• Creation of the YourSuper comparison tool to help you decide which super product best meets your needs.
• By 1 July 2021, MySuper products will be subject to an annual performance test. If a fund is deemed to be under-performing, it will need to inform its members of its underperformance by 1 October 2021.

Proposed personal tax cuts

Australian taxpayers are set to benefit immediately as the Government plans to bring forward the tax cuts in Stage 2 of the Personal Income Tax Plan from 1 July 2022 to 1 July 2020.

Key aspects of this measure include:

• The top threshold of the 19% personal income tax bracket will increase from $37,000 to $45,000.
• The top threshold of the 32.5% personal income tax bracket will increase from $90,000 to $120,000.
• The Low Income Tax Offset (LITO) will increase from $445 to $700. The increased LITO will be withdrawn at a rate of 5 cents per dollar between taxable incomes of $37,500 and $45,000. The LITO will then be withdrawn at a rate of 1.5 cents per dollar between taxable incomes of $45,000 and $66,667.
• The Low And Middle Income Tax Offset (LMITO) will be retained for the 2020-21 financial year.

For a full commentary please see this Federal Budget 2020-21 Summary provided by BT Investment Solutions.