The latest analysis into the SMSF sector has shown if the proposed Division 296 tax had been in place for the 2024 financial year, the average tax burden for some superannuants would have been $51,702.
The “2025 Class Annual Benchmark Report” released today indicated the latest estimated liability from the proposed measure increased from an estimated $49,925 for the previous financial year. The extrapolation was formed from the circumstances of 18,198 SMSFs using the Class platform and also revealed the proportion of this cohort that would lack sufficient liquidity to cover the impost.
“We had an increase of about 10 per cent of the number of people impacted and we had an increase to about 6.7 per cent of those affected who we estimated would have liquidity issues in terms of funding the tax,” Class chief executive Tim Steele confirmed.
Last year’s report found 5 per cent of SMSFs would face liquidity issues if they had been confronted with having to pay the new tax.
“You’re just going to end up, particularly without any capping or any indexing of the cap, capturing so many more people over time and it will end up being a far more economically beneficial tax outcome for the government than they’d estimated,” Steele added.
Further, of those funds not having sufficient liquidity to pay a Division 296 liability, more than one in three hold direct property.
The Division 296 liability estimations are based on the latest available Class tax return data for the 2024 income year, but analysis for 2024/25 has shown the amount of funds that could be impacted by the tax is only growing.
In 2024/25, there were 19,881 Class SMSF members, or 7.9 per cent, with balances of $3 million or more. There were also another 21,141 members with account balances between $2 million and $3 million, or 8.7 per cent of the service provider’s clients who could be caught by the measure if the proposed $3 million threshold is not indexed.
“This is going to generate about $940 million of [government] revenue based on our analysis for the [Class] clients impacted,” Steele said.
In applying the findings to the whole of the SMSF sector, Class forecast the monetary impact could be close to $2.7 billion, well in excess of the initial $2.3 billion government estimate.
The “2025 Class Annual Benchmark Report” measured data across 189,046 SMSFs and 352,483 fund members.
