Late on Friday, it a big revision of JobKeeper numbers was revealed in a joint media release from Treasury and the ATO, with the number of recipients downgraded from 6.5 million to 3.5 million and the total cost of the rescue package revised down to $70 billion from $130 billion:
The enrolment forms completed by 910,055 businesses who have self‑assessed as eligible under the scheme had indicated that this program would cover around 6.5 million eligible employees. The ATO’s review of these forms has found that around 1,000 of those businesses appear to have made significant errors when reporting the estimate of eligible employees on their enrolment form. The most common error was that instead of reporting the number of employees they expected to be eligible, they reported the amount of assistance they expected to receive. For example, over 500 businesses with ‘1’ eligible employee reported a figure of ‘1,500’ (which is the amount of JobKeeper payment they would expect to receive for each fortnight for that employee)…
In light of the take‑up of the scheme to date, remaining enrolments, and that the scheme remains open to new registrations, Treasury now expects the number of employees likely to be covered under the JobKeeper program to be around 3.5 million… Treasury estimated that around 6.5 million employees would access the program. This estimate was developed at a time when Coronavirus cases were growing significantly in Australia and restrictions were being tightened across Australia and much of the world…
