Continuing concern about off-market transfers
While the Small Independent Superannuation Funds Association (SISFA) has welcomed the Government's decision not to proceed with many of the proposed super changes inherited from the previous Government, SISFA chair Michael Lorimer has stated the organisation remains concerned about the handling of off-market transfers.
Talking about the scrapping of the pension earnings tax specifically, Lorimer said that the impracticalities of such a measure were only the beginning.
"Aside from the impracticality and unworkability (or even impossibility) of the measure acknowledged by the Government, as we said at the time, this would effectively have been a retrospective tax on the hard-earned long-term savings of self-funded retirees," he said.
Lorimer was similarly supportive of the decision to abandon the Labor Government's proposed Superannuation Charter and Council of Super Custodians.
"This would have only added more unnecessary layers of bureaucracy to a policy development and implementation framework that we consider is robust and already works well," he said.
"But we now note and are wary that (the off-market transfer of assets between self-managed super funds and related parties) has re-emerged and remains on the Government's list of matters requiring further consultation.
"Clearly we thought this was dead and buried and would have preferred that to be the case," Lorimer continued.
"So we certainly hope that this is one of the remaining 64 measures with which the Government has stated it has 'a disposition not to proceed."
Originally published in SMSF Essentials.
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