Category: Superannuation

With a 1 July 2017 start date, there is not much time to adjust your superannuation strategies.  The 2016 Federal Budget superannuation changes have recently been legislated and are the...

In light of the Federal Budget and given the media's tendency to focus on the unfavourable superannuation changes, this month's Wealth Pipeline focuses on the positive takeaways from the proposals. If the legislation is passed, the below changes will come into effect 1st July 2017.

It is fairly common knowledge nowadays that superfunds can borrow. What is less known is that there are no restrictions on who superfunds can borrow from. Assuming that the loan is structured in a compliant manner, SMSF members can lend moneys to their SMSF.

As detailed in part 1 of our Superannuation Estate Planning series, superannuation death benefits can only be paid to a member’s legal personal representative(s) -LPR- and/or their dependants as defined by the Superannuation legislation (SIS). Although these parties may qualify as a superannuation dependant the benefit may be subject to tax. The tax treatment of death benefit payments relies upon whether the beneficiary qualifies as a dependant for tax purposes. The below table summarises both Superannuation (SIS) dependants and tax dependants.

These issues must be considered and resolved if such a proposal was to be implemented by a future government and any proposal will need to be followed up by genuine and meaningful consultation to work through implementation issues. Whether the measure announced by the ALP ever sees the light of day, we don’t know. However, what we can be certain about is that change in the long term will occur to address the Budget deficit and redistribution of superannuation tax concessions.