Govt abolishes senior supplement
The Federal Government has used the Budget to include untaxed superannuation in the income test for new recipients of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card.
While the Federal Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has stood by the Government’s pre-election promise not to announce any adverse changes to superannuation or pensions, he foreshadowed significant changes beyond the life the of the current Parliament, including linking pensions to inflation twice-yearly from September 2017.
As well, he announced that asset and associated income test thresholds would be indexed between now and 2017, before remaining at fixed levels for three years.
He said the changes would mean that pensions would always rise with the cost of living, and the value of the pension would continue to rise, but the system would be much better placed to meet the challenge of a significant increase in demand.
Hockey also used his Budget speech to confirm that the age of eligibility for the age pension would increase to 70 by 2035, noting that “to ensure more consistent treatment of senior Australians with similar incomes, untaxed superannuation will be included in the income test for new recipients of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card”.
He also said that to “better target assistance”, the annual Seniors Supplement would be abolished from 1 July, this year.
Recommended for you
The regulator has convened multiple sitting panels of the FSCP regarding AFSL breach reports which have identified poor superannuation advice from financial advisers.
One licensee has lost 27 advisers in the past week, now sitting at zero, according to the latest Wealth Data figures.
AFCA remains firm on its stance that industry failures occurring in the financial advice sector are fundamentally an advice issue, rather than a product issue.
A Sydney financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any financial services, with the regulator deriding his “lack of integrity, trustworthiness and professionalism”.
