New super laws – the death of transition to retirement income streams?
New super laws – planning for 1 July 2017
New super laws – transfer balance cap – how the cap affects death benefits
New super laws – how they affect market linked pensions
New super laws – the transfer balance cap
The transfer balance cap is the new limit on how much a member can have in their pension account and accordingly is a limit on how much a super fund can have in “pension phase”. Income and capital gains are tax free to the extent they are in pension phase. To the extent that a super fund is in “accumulation phase” its income is taxed at 15% and capital gains, on assets held for more than 12 months, are taxed at 10%.
New super laws – non-concessional contributions cap
The headline items to this measure is that the non-concessional contributions cap will be reduced from $180K to $100K, the “bring forward rule” will be reduced from $540K to $300K and that members with account balances over $1.6 million will not be able to make non-concessional contributions. But like most of the new measures there are additional complexities to the new non-concessional cap measures.
New super laws - transfer balance cap – transitional CGT relief – cost base reset
The transfer balance cap measure includes a transitional CCT relief via a cost base reset. This relief is designed to ensure that only capital growth post the introduction of all of transfer balance cap (ie from 1 July 2017) is taxed. However, like all of the new measures the relief is complicated and requires careful consideration prior to 1 July 2017.