Small business is “the engine room of Australia,” the “backbone of our economy,” the “hope of the side”. They are the words used by the then treasurer and now prime minister Scott Morrison to justify special treatment for small businesses, an approach shared by leaders in every political party from Labor to One Nation to the Australian Greens It’s a belief that underpins a wide range of grants and subsidies, free advice programs and preferential tax treatments, including exemptions from payroll tax a lower rate of company tax discounts on personal income tax if unincorporated exemptions in prescribed circumstances from capital gains tax up-front tax-deductibility of capital investments less onerous…