Mangan’s call to abolish payroll tax to save Sydney’s restaurants

One of Australia’s leading chefs and restaurateurs, Luke Mangan, has offered up an idea to help save Sydney’s restaurant sector and says in order to restore business confidence, the government must cut payroll and FBT taxes.

Acknowledging that the government has done a tremendous job thus far in fighting COVID, Mangan is concerned for the immediate future of the hospitality industry. 

“I started chatting with a number of people in the hospitality business I admire and respect to understand the way forward for an industry like ours, where three out of five restaurants or cafes go broke and profits are sometimes as low as one per cent,” says Mangan.

These discussions led to a number of transformational ideas, starting with a change to payroll tax.

“If the government wants to be all about jobs, jobs, jobs, then we in the business can do that if they abolish payroll tax. It really is crazy to penalise companies for employing staff. But if the tax goes, it will give small business some hope to continue in the future and create more jobs.

“Likewise, the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT),” says Mangan.

These tax cuts are about “strengthening the backbone of our community: the small restaurants, small cafes, wine bars, and corner stores that are the beating heart of our city.”

Mangan attended the Summer Summit 2020 last week.

Its aim was to get Sydney’s CBD up and running again. One thing he took away from the summit was the need to get people back into the city and build confidence in people to allow this to happen.

“That means getting office staff back in a healthy and safe way, and that should start with government departments setting a path for the big corporates to follow.

“Alfresco dining with entertainment is a great start, but for this to happen council and government need to work together,” he says.

However, small businesses are being charged too much to do this and, he argues, those charges need to be abolished.

The cost of setting up an outdoor restaurant can run into the thousands each month, “but more seating means more revenue, means more jobs and more revenue for the government,” Mangan says.

“My message to our leaders is that the job so far has been great, but we need to do more than talk about ideas, we need to action them. Like any good recipe the plan needs to be followed but the detail is in the execution – let’s do this!”