Small businesses are so vital to NZ from an economic and social perspective.  They fuel our economy, employ many of our people and are integral to any community.

If we are to get out of the financial mess we now find ourselves in, we need to help small businesses to succeed, grow and continue to hire great New Zealanders.

National Leader Judith Collins and I have announced our Small Business Plan:

• Reduce the cost and compliance of the tax system for small businesses. This includes increasing the threshold for paying provisional tax from $2500 to $25,000, raising the compulsory threshold for paying GST from $60,000 to $75,000 and allowing for depreciated assets to be written off once their value falls to $3000, as well as changing the unfair Use of Money interest rates imposed by the IRD.
• Make employment law fairer for small businesses.  This means rolling back some of the union-friendly rules and implementing a fairer disputes process for termination of employment.
• Improve cash flow for small businesses.  This means making sure Government departments pay their bills faster. We will also implement a ‘Small Business Payments Guarantee’ scheme.
• Reduce red tape for small business.  We will undertake a review of Worksafe to ensure it’s adopting a reasonable approach to health & safety, and we’ll simplify the Anti-Money Laundering legislation.
• Improve access to capital for new and existing small businesses.  We will encourage some of the $50bn held by KiwiSaver providers to be invested in great New Zealand businesses.

We have also reaffirmed our previous policies which:

• Encourage small businesses to invest in new productive assets by allowing them to immediately expense new capital investments up to $150,000, thereby helping to lower the tax burden on those businesses.
• Encourage job creation for small businesses by providing a $10,000 cash grant for new hires with our JobStart policy and repeal Labour’s changes to the Employment Relations Act
• Provide New Zealanders who have lost their job up to $30,000 in capital to put towards a new business idea through our BusinessStart package.

Read the detail here: https://www.national.org.nz/small-business