Thanks to a sole trader who filed a case against ATO, the tax body will review thousands of JobKeeper decisions.

They will now receive thousands of small businesses’ rejected JobKeeper applications and will review them.

The sole trader, Jeremy Apted, brought a case against ATO’s decision to reject his JobKeeper application on the basis that he didn’t have an active ABN as of 12 March last year.

The Federal Court ruled in favour of the trader in late March which opened the gate for review of all rejected applications on a similar basis. Other businesses can ask ATO to retrospectively access JobKeeper wage subsidies.

According to JobKeeper Rules of the ATO, the Commissioner had powers to allow additional time for holding an ABN. The ATO released its statement recently on the decision, agreeing that the Commissioner’s discretion is much broader than had been applied to date. With this decision, the ATO will review thousands of other JobKeeper applications rejected for not meeting the ABN test on 12 March 2020.

The ATO explained, “The Commissioner acknowledges that there are entities who might be impacted by the decision and is committed to addressing any such cases as a matter of priority.”

The ATO will send notifications to any similar business whose eligibility has been reversed due to the latest verdict by 31 May.

This is a big move and will probably affect thousands of taxpayers”. Some of the taxpayers never enrolled in JobKeeper because they were of the notion that they were not eligible or had sought advice from taxation agents who advised that they were not eligible. Now these taxpayers will be able to contact the ATO to review their JobKeeper case.

This decision hasn’t opened the doors for everyone as applicants are still required to meet existing eligibility conditions. The decision hasn’t made the changes in other criteria of JobKeeper or cash flow boost, or in other parts of the tax law.

Therefore, everyone who was previously denied JobKeeper or cash flow boost is not eligible. It is only an opportunity for few lucky Businesses.