According to a new law[1] that came into effect on 13 September 2021, listed companies must lodge a JobKeeper notice with their market operator (e.g. ASX) if the listed company or one of its subsidiaries have received a JobKeeper payment in the income tax year.
An entity will be a subsidiary of the listed entity if the listed company directly or indirectly controls:
The due date for your notice depends on when your report is lodged with ASIC: If you are a listed company that has lodged its report for the financial year with ASIC on or before the day after the new law was enacted (i.e. 14 September 2021), you must lodge your notice within 60 days after 14 September 2021, that is, by 13 November 2021.
If you are a listed company that did not lodge its report on or before 14 September 2021, you must lodge your notice within 60 days after lodging your report for the financial year with ASIC.
Listed companies that fail to lodge such notices will attract a penalty of $13,320 (i.e. 60 penalty units).
ASIC has advised that it expects to release a template for the notice by mid-October 2021.
Because these notices will be released publicly and issued by ASIC in a consolidated report, there will be public scrutiny of how much JobKeeper support the government provided to listed companies. Such actions may inevitably lead to closer scrutiny on whether entities that claimed JobKeeper were in fact eligible to claim JobKeeper.
Therefore, it is now more important than ever that businesses have proper tax governance frameworks (i.e. tax controls and processes) in place to support tax decision making and control tax risks.
Please contact your Crowe adviser or get in touch with the Crowe Tax Advisory Team so that we can assist you with this new JobKeeper reporting and review your current tax governance framework.
[1] New Section 323DB of the Corporations Act 2001.