The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) has declared it will be raising a few specific issues about superannuation legislation with the new federal government in the immediate future.
“First of all we’d really like them to rethink the removal of the lower-income super contribution scheme. Notwithstanding the links to the mining tax, making the system equitable for low-income earners makes sense and is good policy,” ICAA head of superannuation Liz Westover told the industry body’s 2013 National SMSF Conference in Melbourne today.
“We’ll be encouraging them not to defer further increases to the super guarantee rate and to allow the increases to proceed to 12 per cent as was intended.
“We want to talk to them about future changes to superannuation to ensure that any further reform only occurs following considered discussion and with a long-term outlook.”
Westover stressed the ICAA was determined to make sure any contemplated changes to the SMSF sector were based on real and substantiated evidence of the need for change.
“We will be encouraging them not to be looking at any wholesale review of SMSFs despite calls from some sections of the superannuation and broader financial services industry.”
Despite these efforts, she said she was expecting closer government scrutiny of the SMSF sector over the coming year.
“Five hundred billion dollars’ worth of assets necessitate the need for government regulators to keep an eye on the sector, particularly when much of the ongoing inflows into those 510,000 SMSFs are mandatory super guarantee contributions and they have access to concessional taxation arrangements,” she said.
Limited recourse borrowing arrangements was one area where she expected greater government examination to take place, considering the Stronger Super review recommended the situation be reassessed effectively a year ago.
