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Joseph Daoud, founder of It’s Simple Finance and pressure group Stop the Ambition Tax, has joined forces with Belinda Raso, co-founder of TaxInvest Accounting, to challenge the government’s latest move to ban businesses from surcharging EFTPOS, Visa, and Mastercard payments.
The ban, which came into effect on 1 October 2026, has been criticised by the campaign for “putting a surcharge on running a business”.
Echoing Daoud’s earlier campaign against changes to capital gains tax, the group has put up billboards at Canberra Airport to greet politicians arriving for Parliament this week.
The campaign is also airing a 30-second television commercial nationally, featuring more than 30 small-business owners speaking directly to camera about the costs of running their businesses.
Daoud, who has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s tax reforms, has already engaged in a range of stunts from writing “stop the tax” in the sky above Parliament to playing the Prime Minister at tennis and meeting with the Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.
‘Small business is the engine room of this country’
Daoud said he had been inundated with messages from small-business owners since the surcharge ban began.
“I had hundreds of small-business owners reach out to me to help them get their concerns out on this new surcharge ban,” he said.
“I couldn’t stand by and let more ambitious Australians feel helpless, so I helped them organise some media behind it all.
“I didn’t build this platform for me. It’s about we. Small-business owners are already suffocating, so if I can help them, I will help them.”
The campaign argues that while businesses can no longer pass on payment surcharges, the cost of accepting card payments remains, leaving operators to absorb the expense or increase prices.
“They made the surcharge illegal and the cost unavoidable. Only in Canberra could you call that a saving,” Daoud said.
“This Government is happy to pose for a photo with a small-business owner at election time. Then it goes back to Canberra and sends them the bill.
“Small business is the engine room of this country, and this Government keeps treating it like an ATM.”
The campaign comes amid figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing 375,331 businesses closed in 2025–26, more than 1,000 a day. That was up from 370,500 the previous financial year.
‘Delaying a bad decision doesn’t make it a good one’
Raso said the campaign was about more than the card surcharge ban, pointing to what she described as a broader accumulation of costs and regulatory changes for small businesses.
“This isn’t just about the ATO’s credit card ban. It’s about every surcharge this Government keeps putting on running a small business. The card surcharge ban, the red tape, the rule changes that land with no warning. This Government seems hellbent on making it as hard as possible to run a small business, and we’ve had enough,” she said.
“I see my clients’ books every day. These are people working long hours on margins that cannot swallow another hit. They are not asking for a handout. They are asking Canberra to stop making it harder.”
Raso said she contacted Daoud after seeing the impact on her clients.
“When I saw what this was doing to my clients, I knew we needed someone who had already taken on Canberra and won. So I picked up the phone to Joe,” Raso said.
The campaign also follows a decision by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to extend its acceptance of credit card payments until 30 June 2027, after previously announcing it would stop accepting them after 30 November 2026.
Raso, who launched a petition to the House of Representatives calling for credit card payments to remain an option, said the extension did not resolve the issue.
“The ATO’s nine month Band-Aid just isn’t good enough. Delaying a bad decision doesn’t make it a good one. Small businesses use credit cards to manage cash flow and pay their tax on time. They need certainty, not a stay of execution,” Raso said.
Daoud, who launched Stop the Ambition Tax in May 2026 in response to the government’s capital gains tax changes, said the latest campaign was another attempt to make small-business owners’ concerns heard in Canberra.
“Maybe the Prime Minister should spend a little less time shooting TikToks with influencers and a little more time talking to the people who actually keep this economy running. Small-business owners would love to show him around. He just has to put the phone down first,” he said.
“Last time it took skywriting over Parliament House before anyone listened. I’ve still got the pilot’s number.”
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