The Treasury Laws Amendment (2017 Measures No. 2) Bill 2017 has been tabled in Parliament. The Bill proposes to make two important changes to transition to retirement income streams (TRISs). Firstly, to allow certain TRISs to qualify for “retirement phase” and, secondly, to ensure TRISs qualify for the cost base reset.
Sladen Snippet - many SMSFs to face “monthly” TBAR reporting regime from 1 July 2017
As part of administering the new transfer balance cap measure, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is currently developing a new self managed superannuation fund (SMSF) event based reporting regime. This regime is likely to be in the form of a report to be called the Transfer Balance Account Report or TBAR. At this stage, the reporting regime is expected to be as follows:
Sladen Snippet – death benefit pensions may be commuted into accumulation prior to 1 July 2017
There is some good news and some bad news with the ATO’s release of Practical Compliance Guide PCG 2017/6. The good news is that spouses in receipt of death benefit pensions may commute their death benefit pensions in excess of the transfer balance cap back into accumulation before 1 July 2017. The bad news is that this concession does not apply to non-spouses and won’t apply after 30 June 2017.
Sladen Snippet – ATO extends lodgement date for 2015/16 SMSF returns to 30 June 2017
Sladen Snippet – Super and the 2017 budget – no news is good news
Paper on the super reforms: What you need to do before 30 June 2017
Paper on the new super laws - An overview of the super reforms
Sladen Snippet – ATO gives guidance on how to commute pensions by 30 June 2017 for the transfer balance cap measure
Sladen Snippet – Documents for the new super laws
Sladen Legal video presentations on the new super laws
Units trusts and cost base resets under the transfer balance cap (TBC)
Sladen Snippet - do super fund deeds and pension documents need to be updated pre 1 July 2017?
Sladen Snippet – ATO releases FAQs on the LRBA safe harbour rules
Sladen Snippet – Last few weeks left to fix up non-commercial LRBA loans
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.