The slow passage of the Division 296 bill through parliament means SMSF trustees and advisers should continue to delay any action in regards to the additional tax on superannuation earnings, given that if it is passed, its start date may be subject to change.
BT head of financial literacy and advocacy Bryan Ashenden said the status of the bill, after it had been split into two parts in order to progress those elements not related to tax, was that it still had not been debated in the Senate, leaving limited time for those affected to prepare, but opening the way for delayed implementation.
“What should you be doing? You still need to be thinking about whether there are things to do now to minimise the impact into the future, but perhaps put a further pause on implementing any of those potential actions,” Ashenden said today during a briefing for advisers.
“Firstly, we haven’t got a bill that has passed through parliament and we know when this bill was originally introduced the intent was to try and have it passed by the middle of this year to give people 12 months to get ready for it to come in. Now we’re going to have less than six months if this bill was to pass to be able to do that.
“That could mean, and there’s nothing to suggest this will be the case, that the start date could get pushed out until 1 July 2026 instead of 1 July 2025.”
He noted while the key areas of debate around the bill have related to indexation of the $3 million threshold and the taxing of unrealised capital gains, there has been no discussion around a change of starting dates.
“There certainly hasn’t been a move in parliament to change the commencement date at this point in time,” he added.
“It’s just a possibility, but I would think about what the potential actions are as we wait until the first quarter of next year to see if the bill gets debated and gets through, and if there are any changes, so we can refine what those strategies might look like.
