SUPERCentral News
The 2017/18 financial has been a busy time for limited recourse borrowing arrangements and our guides have been updated to ensure you are all up-to-date with the changes.
In the 2018 May Budget, the Government announced the proposal to allow individuals who are recent retirees and who have attained age 65, to make last chance voluntary contributions by providing a one year exemption from the work test. This proposal will apply from 1 July 2019 to the 2019/20 and subsequent financial years. As draft legislation to implement the proposal has now been released (2nd October 2018), it is possible to consider the proposal in detail.
SUPERCentral, in conjunction with Townsends Lawyers, have developed the EPAdvantage estate planning member program which is now available to our advisers using the SUPERCentral Testamentary Manual system. It is a complimentary, value-added program that provides registered SUPERCentral members with professional support, PD training and the resources needed in growing a successful estate planning practice.
One of the first announcements made by the new Prime Minister has been in relation to the pension age for entitlement to the Government's Age Pension. The previously announced policy of the Government was to gradually increase the pension age from 67 to 70 (to be achieved in or around 2035).
The first home super saver scheme (FHSS scheme) has been officially up and running since 1 July 2018. Under this scheme individuals who have never owned a home can have access to their super savings to buy their first home.
The ATO is now processing the first transfer balance account reports (TBARs) provided by SMSFs. This in turn is giving rise to the ATO identifying taxpayers who have exceeded their transfer balance cap and the ATO issuing excess transfer balance determinations.
SUPERCentral, in conjunction with Townsends Lawyers, are the preferred suppliers for estate planning services for Financial Wisdom and Count Financial advisers through the EPAdvantage program. If you are intending to incorporate estate planning services into your practice in 2019 you must...
Ask.Will captures a snapshot of your client's current situation, and provides a comprehensive guide for estate planning and Will requirements.
To help you support your clients with proactive compliance, we have prepared a new precedent, which the member of an SMSF and the trustee may execute, providing the evidence of the pensioner's conscious exercise of their right to characterise any future additional payment as a partial commutation.
Trusts that hold or intend to hold residential property in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland may be liable to surcharge land tax and/or surcharge purchaser duty if any of their beneficiaries qualifies as a 'foreign person', regardless of the specified law of the State set out in the trust deed which governs the trust. The surcharge is in addition to any land tax the trust may already be paying.
Version 05/18 of the SUPERCentral Governing Rules (the current version of the Governing Rules) has now been accepted as a "standard terms document" for Queensland title purposes.
Previously, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has suggested that operating a self managed superannuation fund which had less than $200,000 of investible funds (probably now $202,315 - due to inflation since the suggestion was first made) was probably unviable. Now it seems that the Productivity Commission, in its recently released (29 May 2018) draft report "Superannuation: Assessing Efficiency and Competitiveness", has concluded that SMSFs with less than $1 million are "not competitive" in terms of net returns against retail super offerings.
According to the Productivity Commission, more than one million members have chosen to self-manage their super in an SMSF. Large SMSFs are broadly competitive with institutional funds in terms of net returns. However, smaller ones (with less than $1 million in assets) perform significantly worse than institutional funds, mainly due to the materially higher average costs they incur due to being small (page 14, Superannuation: Efficiency and Competitiveness Draft Report).
The proposal by the Government to include the debt amount outstanding of certain limited recourse borrowing arrangements (LRBAs) in the determination of the entitlement to contributions caps is still before Parliament.
A recent dispute before the Victorian Supreme Court (Davern Family Super Fund - [2018] VSC 80) has again illustrated the care with which SMSFs involving blended families need to be handled.
If the development of an estate planning service is currently out of the scope of your business, you may like to use our direct client referral service. Our lawyers can liaise directly with your client, anywhere in Australia. We pay special attention to direct client referrals, and are mindful of the reputation of the professional who sent them to us.
One of the anomalies of the "Fair and Sustainable" superannuation changes was to prevent a transition to retirement income stream (TRIS) which was reversionary from transferring to a beneficiary if the beneficiary was not in retirement phase at the date of transfer. This anomalous outcome will soon be consigned to history with legislation currently before Parliament to permit a reversionary TRIS to transfer to the nominated reversionary beneficiary whether or not the beneficiary is in retirement phase.
Both the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) have recently released superannuation statistics. The APRA statistics are up to March 2018 while the ATO statistics are up to the 2015/16 financial year.
If you are looking to gain a depth of detail about various estate planning options and looking for opportunities to grow your estate planning fee base, then you may like to consider our EPAdvantage Program.