Greek Australians play a significant role in the Australian small business sector. With Tony Abbott’s proposed tax cut for small businesses, from 30 per cent to 28 and a half per cent-half a per cent more than Labor – Neos Kosmos examines what this could mean for small businesses in Australia.

We’ve advocated not just to lower tax rates but also to strip away the complexity and there’s different ways of doing that. It’s a much more holistic way of looking at it, but it would make a big difference.

Anastasios Koutsikos, Director of Strategy at Hellenic Australian Council of Chamber and Industry (HACCI) and principal of Think Tax, said any tax savings are important for small businesses.

“Small business has a tendency to keep reinvesting in itself because by its very nature of being small if they’re experiencing growth; there is no alternative but to apply for funds from outside sources or internally generated,” Mr Koutsikos told Neos Kosmos.

“Any tax cut is fundamental in giving small businesses the opportunity to pursue their dreams and reinvest within itself to meet capacity and to be able to maybe spend money where it needs to,” he said.

Vicki Stylianou, a director of Council of Small Businesses of Australia (COSBOA) told Neos Kosmos that a tax reform would make a big difference for small businesses.

“We’ve been pushing for more than one or two per cent, more like 20 per cent cut; tax burden is a big burden,” she said.

“We’ve advocated not just to lower tax rates but also to strip away the complexity and there’s different ways of doing that. It’s a much more holistic way of looking at it, but it would make a big difference,” she said.

Ms Stylianou said Greek small businesses are represented as a subset of all small business but whether or not the Liberal party can afford the tax cuts depends on the detailed costing.

“You need to look at the total picture because even though you might say ‘they can afford it’ the question is what else are they going to cut if they’re going to balance the books?”

Ms Stylianou said the effectiveness of the tax cut could not be really assessed without all the policies properly costed.

Asked if Labor is interested in small businesses, Ms Stylianou said her company is apolitical and focuses on individual policies of the party rather than following one agenda.

“Labor say they are interested in small businesses, I suppose to some extent they would be but again it’s a case of looking at it policy by policy and program by program, and asking what it means, because in a way everybody is interested in small business to some extent,” she said.