Printers have mixed feeling about Tuesday night’s Federal Budget, welcoming the company tax cut and moves to reduce government expenditure, but are concerned about how some measures will affect their bottom line.

David Torelli, owner of Melbourne digital printer High Caliber, says Prime Minister Tony Abbott is in a difficult position but needed to make changes.

“The budget won’t be popular but it needed to be done. It’s like coming into a businesses and making it profitable again,” he says.

Torelli says the 1.5 per cent cut to the company tax rate for about 800,000 small and medium businesses, which was not included in the budget but is promised to begin July next year, will assist print firms, but he expects this will be partially offset by various regulations that cost business time and money to comply with.

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Tony Wolf & Son managing director Ian Wolf says he is impressed with the budget and that the country ‘needed to be whipped into shape’, also welcoming the company tax cut.

“It will allow us to spend more money in other areas, I just wish it was starting this year,” he says.

Wolf was also happy with the wage subsidy for businesses hiring workers more than 50 years of age. “I think it will help the many printers who have been displaced by closures around the country get back into the industry, since it’s very difficult to get work in the current climate,” he says.

Torelli was less impressed with the reintroduction of bi-annual fuel excise indexation pegged to CPI that will likely hike petrol prices by one cent a year.

“We spend hundreds of thousands on fuel each year so it will put pressure on our pricing. It will only be a small effect but negative all the same,” he says.

Torelli is also unhappy with the increase in fringe benefit tax from 47 to 49 per cent.

“Like all business owners, there’s a benefit to owning cars and other vehicles for the business, so that’s an extra cost,” he says.

Wolf says his company is already being hit with fuel levies transporting some products to WA that his freight company routinely passes on, and now the rest of his distribution will be hit.

“Unfortunately we will have no choice but to pass the costs on to our clients,” he says.

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Former PIAA national manager for policy and government affairs Hagop Tchamkertenian says the planned company tax cut should have been implemented immediately and not next July but praised the $10,000 mature aged worker subsidy.

“It will help some printers get experienced staff and improve their cashflow with extra money over time,” he says.

“It will be a big help for those mature workers made redundant by company collapses and industry downturn.”

He says while indexing the fuel excise is a good move economically as it represents structural change, it will hit printers that distribute their products themselves or through a third party.

“There will obviously be a cost impact. Any increase in tax impacts on business costs, and given the tight margins being experienced in the printing industry it could become an issue for many printers” he says.

Tchamkertenian says the announced cuts to the public sector will also be another blow to Canberra printers and other printers who rely on the Federal bureaucracy and government contracts to generate work.

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