Angus Taylor said he spoke to “a bunch” of small business owners over the weekend who felt that they were “under assault” from the Budget changes.
“The Labor Party clearly doesn’t like small business, and they want small business to help to fund their rapid growth in spending,” he said.
Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume says that small businesses were “seeing their very structures under threat”.
“So many small businesses are set up using a trust structure, a perfectly legitimate, perfectly legal structure to set up to protect assets and to assist small businesses,” she said.
“Well, Jim Chalmers is accused of these people of avoiding their tax obligations. How dare he?”
There are more than 2.6 million small businesses in Australia.
The latest tax office data, from 2023, shows that about 303,000 registered trusts are used by businesses, or 11 per cent of the number of small businesses.