every employee you hire is more paperwork
PAYG registration as a trading entity.
Per individual worker: Name, TFN, DOB, DL# (if applicable), address, and bank account details, superannuation account details, and medical certification of fitness for work (seriously & at your cost) - prior to start. Accrued sick leave, reported weekly to employee. Accrued holiday leave, reported weekly to employee. Long service leave 'loading' reported and payed quarterly. Superannuation to be payed quarterly. Worker's compensation insurance payments as per payment schedule. Worker's compensation insurance wages reporting, annually. PAYG wages withholding to be reported and payed quarterly along with quarterly GST reporting. PAYG statement to be issued annually to workers.
The safety assurance list is even more onerous and is government mandated at the behest of insurance companies seeking pay-when-we-feel-like-it legislation. Fail to fully comply, and I mean fucking fully, over the course of
years of practice and record keeping, and the corporate veil is negated in the event of an injury, actual or spurious. Super general, general, monthly, weekly, job specific, daily, and "Take 5" paperwork all to be completed and kept on file, reported, etc. One missing piece of paper, one squeaky bolt on a ladder, whatever, and kiss everything you have adios in the event of a worker's compensation claim. Which you should just go ahead and do because somewhere in this impossible scheme you will, however small, have failed to be compliant. And if you haven't then dig the new catchphrase: "Every accident is preventable." So why am I paying you, worker's comp insurance company? Oh yeah, I have to under penalty of law. However much you say and whatever impossible demands you want to impose.
And there's more. Way more. Advertising, interviewing & vetting (they are all idiots! why am I here.) Training costs - oh boy. Lost costs from untrainables. Seeming trainables who can't achieve breakeven. People you can't just fire because you can't fire anyone, by law, without 3 written warnings. No shows. Wednesday shows when they're broke and need a quick advance. Drug addicts. Alcoholics. Why would you tell the client he's a dick because you were late? Glad I factor for bad debt. People who keep fucking things up so you work back to fix their work. Apprenticeship schemes (not even). Tools of trade & associated costs. Idiots damaging tools. Idiots losing tools. Thieves pawning tools. Vehicles (purchase, maintenance, idiots, & associated costs). Insurances on tools of trade and vehicles. There is no end.
By the time I train a trainable man and put him in a company van with required tools to go to your house to work for 30 minutes, I have to bill you like $500 just to break even. And the quality of his work is going to be shit compared to what I will do in 10 minutes for a lousy $200, and you're wife is gonna be horny later on.
If I want to pay you $50 an hour to do something you're capable of doing, and you want to do it for $50 an hour, well guess what? We can't legally do it. You'd think we could but there's all these assholes who have interposed themselves between you and I, so if we want to strike a simple agreement then we need the ok of every single one of them. And that's gonna cost us. I have to give a shitload of percentages to private companies with legislative clout and jump through their hoops (*penalty of law*), and so do you. Sorry to report that they have made you unemployable by virtue of costs and liabilities. I now need you billable at $200 an hour in order to pay you $50 an hour, but if your work is billable at $200 then you're not going to be here long at $50.
And that's how I became a communist who hates everyone.
