Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) revealed that a whopping $13 billion (over 13% of the $98 billion wage subsidy) was handed to nearly 200,000 companies that received JobKeeper payments but whose profits rose:
Yesterday, the Australian Treasury released a paper defending these overpayments on the grounds that doing so would have stifled the economic recovery:
A mechanism to claw back payments from businesses that performed better than expected was not included, reflecting a desire to avoid any disincentives for businesses to adapt and recover. The introduction of such a mechanism would likely have reduced the overall level of activity and muted the recovery.
