Collins Hume Blog

Have casual workers been granted annual leave?

News headlines recently stated that casual workers have won the right to paid leave following a decision in the Federal Court. As usual, the devil is in the detail.

At present, there is no global change granting Australian casual workers paid leave. The case however, highlights the long running problem of determining over time, who is a permanent staff member and entitled to paid leave and other benefits, and who is a casual worker entitled to a casual loading.

In the WorkPac v Rossato case, WorkPac, a specialist mining and engineering labour hire company, employed Mr Rossato as a casual worker across six consecutive employment contracts for a continuous period of approximately three and a half years. Over that time, Mr Rossato was paid a casual loading of 25% of the minimum rate of pay payable under the Enterprise Agreement, which was in part, paid in lieu of leave. 

Mr Rossato worked every shift he was rostered for except where he was given approval to take rest and recreation, and when his partner was airlifted to hospital.  Read more…

The ATO's JobKeeper targets

The ATO is looking carefully at businesses that appear to have made adjustments to their circumstances to meet the JobKeeper eligibility requirements where, if those adjustments had not been made, the entity would have been ineligible or had lower JobKeeper payments. Or, where adjustments have been made to enable another entity or subcontractor to meet the decline in turnover test.

In its guidance, the ATO sets out a series of examples that are likely to attract their attention:

• Increase in staff – where the number of staff the business reports have increased beyond levels that were previously required to run the business prior to 1 March 2020.
• Deferring supplies – in industries unlikely to be adversely impacted by the pandemic, the business agrees with its customers to defer making supplies, resulting in the company's projected GST turnover declining to the level required to meet the turnover test.
• Bringing forward supplies – in industries unlikely to be adversely impacted by the pandemic, the business brought forward supplies to be able to meet the decline in turnover test in a following month or quarter.  Read more…

Ballina and Byron shine platinum with new Xero platinum partners, Collins Hume!

The team at Collins Hume Accountants and Business Advisers are delighted to announce that we have reached Xero Platinum Partner status.

What does going platinum mean?