Fund budget surplus with cuts to super tax breaks: TreasuryBY MARK STORY | THURSDAY, 29 NOV 2012 12:35PMIf the Gillard government is serious about delivering a budget surplus then it needs to take a razor to super-annuation tax breaks that favour a chosen few. |
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Robert De Dominicis
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
GBST HOLDINGS LIMITED
GBST HOLDINGS LIMITED
It was during a family sojourn to the seaside town of Pescara, Italy, Rob DeDominicis first laid eyes on what would become the harbinger of his future. Andrew McKean writes.
If people want $50k a year in retirement they need to save at least $1 Million to do this safely, how can people accumulate this if the governement constantly erodes the earnings on the invested money by increasing taxes on their "captive" slush fund.
Instead the government needs to focus on ways of improving public sentiment and attracting productivity improvements and investment rather than burning the people that are actually protecting them from a pension cost they will never be able to afford to fund via welfare.
So lets plug the cash flow holes by gouging from superannuation....AGAIN.....Is... it any wonder the voters already have a total "lack of confidence" in superannuation and look at planners suspiciously when we encourage its use......come to think of it.........I am starting to have concerns as well.
If Govt wants the people to fund their own retirement, it is time to stop jerking the rules around.
Once again, let's ban blue ties, it's fine, we don't wear blue ties anyway says the govt.
Reduce the ability to catch up with additional super contributions. Increase the contributions tax for the higher income earners.Reduce the incentive to place after tax money into super (by 50%) and now put further doubt in the minds of those trying to use super to help ensure they don't need to rely on the aged pension, is hardly a productive conversation to have now is it?
And the objective for this govt is to ensure more Australians have better retirement outcomes...??
Maybe they should consider this objective and then frame their policy with it as the guiding princple..sure..not likely....that's what a good CEO would do.
The government should learn to spend frugally the money that it extorts from it's citizens in the name of income tax and other taxes by different names. The statement "the budget misses out on over $30 billion annually in tax revenue through super" really says it all. The budget is not "missing out" at all. A 15% contributions tax has already been stolen from the long suffering tax payer when the super contribution is made and a further 15% taken from the fund earnings. One could argue that if this government (or any other for that matter) was really serious about the shortfall in superannuation savings for the average person, the contributions and earnings taxes would be abolished. Articles such as this one by Mark Story are typical of the portrayal of the attitudes of policy makers, public servants etc who have probably never worked for a living in an environment other than the public service etc where their job tenure and income are guaranteed by the tax payer.
Treasury as become far to embedded in the govt camp to provide objective advice. The expansion of targeted concessions would reduce welfare dependency of an aging population not the constant elimination of incentives to save. A naive view from comfortably cosseted bureaucrat.