" ALP’s Chris Bowen pushes his point by quoting from ASFA research, that found that 475 (yes a whopping 475 people out of 24 million people) with superannuation account balances exceeding $10 million received annual pension income of $1.5 million a year. From those 475 people, there are 84 people who are receiving annual pension payments averaging $3.26 million a year."
" ASFA does not represent the SMSF sector, but the ASFA research paper targets SMSFs as if all the rich folk have SMSFs and any tax changes need to be targeted towards SMSF members, especially those with super pensions.
ASFA represents all of the large super funds, and those large super funds are losing retiring members to SMSFs"
" ALP had a proposed policy that would tax pension earnings (not benefit payments) over $100,000, and it based this taxable figure on a $2 million balance returning 5% a year (even though investment returns at that time were double and in some cases triple that amount, which meant even account balances around the $700,000 mark could have had their investment earnings taxed)."
" I mention the ALP on this issue because they have offered to support any super changes that target the ‘rich’, and if the Liberals lose the next election (which is highly likely with the policy chaos they have created), then we will be tackling a similar super battle."
Do SMSF members/trustees earn mega-bucks?
"The Australian Taxation office (date released in February 2015) reports the following about SMSF members:
More than half (54.6%) of SMSF members have a taxable income of less than $60,000 a year.
Just under half (42.1%) of all SMSF members have a taxable income of less than $40,000 a year.
Around a quarter (23.0%) of SMSF members earn less than $20,000. Note that any pension payments from a SMSF (or large super fund) are not counted towards taxable income if received on or after the age of 60.
Nearly two-thirds (65.7%) of SMSF members have a taxable income of less than $80,000 a year.
Around three-quarters (73.2%) of SMSF members have a taxable income of less than $100,000 a year.
Around 8% (7.9%) earn more than $200,000 a year, but that figures falls to 4.6% for female SMSF members.
"SMSF balance generally represents two SMSF members which means that the fund balances quoted in the table below need to be halved to gauge the true size of SMSF account balances. For example, nearly three-quarters (70.4%) of SMSFs have fund balances of less than $1 million, and assuming most SMSFs represent two people, the statistics then suggest that nearly three-quarters of SMSF members have less than $500,000 each in super savings. As mentioned earlier, as at December 2014, the average assets per fund member were $549,314."
SMSFs: Total asset range (fund balance)
Asset Ranges
2005-06
2009-10
2010-11
2011-12
2012-13
Column 1
Column 2
Column 3
Column 4
Column 5
Column 6
0
$0-$50,000
11.0%
7.7%
7.1%
7.2%
6.7%
1
>$50,000-$100,000
8.1%
6.5%
5.8%
5.9%
5.1%
2
>$100,000-$150,000
14.1%*
6.3%
5.9%
6.0%
5.4%
3
>$150,000-$200,000
–
5.7%
5.5%
5.5%
5.1%
4
>$200,000-$500,000
27.1%
25.6%
25.2%
25.5%
24.7%
5
>$500,000-$1m
20.7%
22.4%
22.7%
22.9%
23.4%
6
>$1m-$2m
12.8%
15.9%
16.8%
16.5%
17.6%
7
>$2m-$5m
5.3%
8.4%
9.0%
8.8%
9.9%
8
>$5m-$10m
0.7%
1.3%
1.6%
1.5%
1.8%
9
>$10m
0.2%
0.3%
0.3%
0.3%
0.4%
10
Total[/B]
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
According to the ATO, this table approximates the average and median assets per SMSF member and per SMSF at the end of each financial year. These figures are estimates based on SMSF income tax and regulatory return form data for the 2010 to 2013 financial years The data was extracted on 9 July 2014
