Implementing the federal government’s changes to the superannuation system is likely to result in substantial costs for SMSFs, a specialist sector lawyer has said.
DBA Lawyers director Daniel Butler told delegates at his firm’s latest strategy seminar in Sydney last week he had been in contact with Treasury to let officials know how onerous digesting the changes and determining how to implement them is.
“I said to Treasury this is just so hard to summarise and so hard to describe and you’re making it so difficult for the advisory community that it is just going to rack up the costs [for SMSF trustees],” Butler said.
The implementation costs associated with the changes have been estimated to be around $800 million for the industry over the next 10 years, he noted.
“I think that’s a real underscore of the real costs people are going to suffer,” he said.
“We don’t know anything about per dollar of tax revenue they’re extracting from super or how much the costs are.
“On some self-managed funds the cost for every dollar of revenue could be multiples and multiples of that.
“It could be $20 or $30, it could be $50 and in some cases it could be $1000.
“So some SMSFs are going to rack up some really extraordinary costs for very little revenue gain.”
He said despite those assertions, the government does not seem to care about the adverse predicament super funds are facing as a result of the proposed system changes.
