The first pieces of the Government's Jobs and Growth Plan were announced this morning.
The changes aimed to allow business to hold on to money longer but also make returns easier.

Main tax changes are:

* Reducing from this year until 2010 the size of provisional tax repayments business have to make. At the moment business have to factor in 5 per cent growth but that will be dropped for those years. Transitional provisional taxpayers rates reduce by 5 percentage points also.

* The charge for underpayments reduces from 14.24 per cent to 9.73 per cent. The rate for overpayments will reduce from 6.66 to 4.23 per cent.

* The GST payments threshold will be raised from $1.3 million to $2m. That means more businesses will only have to file an account for GST when payment from invoices is actually received.

* The GST registration threshold will be raised from $40,000 to $60,000.

* Businesses with $10,000 or less of business-related legal expenditure will be able to fully deduct the expense in the year it was incurred, whether it was capital spending or not.

* The PAYE monthly filing and payment threshold will be raised from $100,000 to $500,000, allowing more employers to file PAYE returns and pay once a month instead of twice.

* The fringe benefit tax (FBT) threshold will be raised from $100,000 to $500,000 allowing more employers to file returns and pay annually instead or quarterly.

* Fewer businesses will have to return FBT on minor benefits when the value of minor fringe benefits that can be provided to employees without attracting FBT is raised from $200 to $300 per quarter per employee and from $15,000 to $22,500 a year per employer.

* The FBT interest rate for low-interest, employment-related loans will be lowered from 10.9 per cent to 8.05 per cent.

* Some other thresholds, relating to accrual expenditure adjustments, (such as for certain prepaid advertising/travel/lease costs) will also be raised.

* Some changes to simplify tax that are part of a bill already before Parliament will be fast-tracked.

Changes that need to be enacted will be included in a taxation bill and be effective from April 1 or the 2009-10 income year. The changed provisional tax penalties will be effective from March 1 and the new FBT rate for loans will play from the start of this year.