The Self Managed Super Fund Professionals' Association of Australia has weighed into the industry debate on the Greens' call to raise the superannuation tax for high income earners.

Green leader Bob Brown yesterday proposed a scaled tax on super contributions based on a person's marginal tax rate replace the current flat 15 % contributions tax.

"Fixing a system so skewed towards high-income earners could go a long way to lift overall levels of savings. Current rules do nothing to ease the growing gap between the rich and poor," said the Senator.

"Tax breaks on superannuation cost the budget $30 billion a year, as Treasury's latest Tax Expenditure Statement [released 31/1/2012] showed, with almost half of the concessions on contributions going to the top 12% of income earners. The tax breaks were projected to rise to more than $40 billion a year by 2014-15."

Under the Greens' plan, high-income earners would pay more, though still less than their margin tax rate, therefore keeping the incentive to save for retirement, the party said.

However the Self Managed Super Fund Professionals' Association of Australia (SPAA) said there was "no evidence" to suggest tax concessions to high income earners were a net drain on the Budget.

"Rather than focusing on penalising those who are saving through the community pillar of superannuation for an independent life post-working age, the Government should turn its attention to the considerable ongoing barriers to all Australians saving adequately for their retirement," said SPAA chief, Andrea Slattery.

SPAA said government proposals last year to put in place a maximum fund balance limit of $500,000 in order to access higher contribution caps would make the system significantly more complicated.

"It also ignores variations in work and savings patterns of different individuals - particularly women, for whom superannuation balances are inordinately low," the organisation said.