The Government has released legislation outlining alternative eligibility tests for its JobKeeper wage subsidy payments. What are the implications for your JobKeeper eligibility? The alternative test, grants businesses different ways of proving the 30% downturn, potentially opening the wage subsidy up to a new group of businesses, who were not previously eligible. When the JobKeeper package was announced at the end of March, the government said businesses would be eligible if they have seen a 30% drop in turnover because of COVID-19. Over the following days, it became clear, that this revenue drop would be calculated based on a comparative period, 12 months ago. The ATO has now said a business can nominate either a monthly or quarterly turnover period, and compare that period to 2019. But, for many businesses, including startups, a year-on-year comparison just does not make sense. If a business is less than 12 months old, eg, it just will not have revenue figures from a year ago. And, high-growth businesses could very likely have seen turnover drop, but still be reporting figures higher than they were this time last year. At the same time, many businesses were affected by drought this time last year, skewing their … Continue reading Alternate methods of testing eligibility for JobKeeper Payments