Shorten asleep at the wheel on excess contributions
The Federal Opposition has committed to addressing the current excess contributions tax regime in the event it gains office at this year's Federal election.
The Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Senator Mathias Cormann, made the commitment today amid reports that a director of bookselling chain Dymocks had been hit with 78 per cent tax on inadvertent superannuation contributions.
He said that the lack of government action around the excess contributions tax was owed to the Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, being asleep at the wheel for the past two-and-a-half years.
Further, he said that the Dymocks director had not been alone in getting punished by the excess contributions tax, with more than 65,000 Australians similarly impacted in 2010/11.
Cormann said the Coalition believed that all Australians who had breached their contribution caps through inadvertent mistakes should be given the opportunity to correct their mistakes without being hit by a disproportionate tax penalty.
"If the Coalition wins the next election, we will properly address this issue of excess contributions to make sure that Australians are not unfairly penalised for genuine unintended errors when making superannuation contributions," he said.
Newspaper reports dealing with the excess contributions tax penalty incurred by the Dymocks director referenced criticism by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal member hearing the case who described the resulting rate of tax as "unacceptably high by almost every standard".
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