The Fiscal Artisan

 Victorian Business Costs Assistance   Lockdown 4.0 support payments Through Business Victoria, the Victorian State Government has released the guidelines for its latest round of support for businesses and sole traders that the current Victorian lockdown has impacted. There are two specific schemes – the Business Costs Assistance Program (round two) and the Licensed Hospitality Venue Fund. I am focusing here on the Business Costs Assistance Program in this piece. It needs to be noted that not all businesses will qualify automatically, as the support has been targeted primarily at businesses and industries that have been shut down as a result of the lockdown and are unable to continue income-earning activities in a work from home basis. The list of industries are listed in the blog, as well as the guidelines for the scheme. In addition, there are effectively two levels of support, based on the different periods of lockdown between Metropolitan Melbourne and Regional Victor...

  The Australian Federal  Budget 2021 Once in a lifetime…   Last night – Tuesday, May 11, 2021, the Treasurer handed down the budget for the 21/22 year. While the government won’t describe it this way, it is clearly an election budget – given the next election is due by Mid May 2022, so unless they go with a February 2022 budget announcement, there is no time for a follow up before we next go to the polls. And in the current environment, and with a Government hooked on announcements and re-announcements, rather than significant new action, there is very little in the budget that was not already announced, or simply a continuation of what was already in place but dressed up as a ‘new initiative’. Many of the forecasts and expectations in the budget are predicated on the assumption that ‘everything will go so very well’ in terms of the vaccine roll-out – despite actual vaccination numbers being less than one-third of the way to what was originally planned. The Federal Gov...