SUPERCentral News
The Current Version of the SUPERCentral Governing Rules "Version 3/13" has now been registered under the Land Title Act 1994 as a "Standard Terms Document" by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland.
From a purely SMSF perspective the 2013 Budget contained nothing of significance as the unpleasant changes had been previously announced on 5 April 2013.
Complying pensions, in the good old days, were used to achieve two significant planning objectives. The first was to minimise the adverse tax consequences of having excessive benefits - excess as measured by the reasonable benefit limits (RBLs). The other was to qualify for the age pension and Centrelink benefits as complying pensions had either a 100% (or 50%) asset test exempt status.
The ATO has just released the Super Thresholds for 2013/14. The concessional and non-concessional contribution caps are unchanged due to the pause in indexation which applies for 2013/14.
From 1 July 2013, related party asset rules will be extended to cover disposals to related parties. Currently, the related party asset rules deal only with acquisitions from related parties and not disposals to related parties.
The ATO has recently revised these documents and in doing so has made some interesting changes to the Trustee Declaration, the Key Messages Statement, the disclaimer that SMSFs are not covered by the financial assistance scheme and the warning that trustees should regularly assess whether an SMSF is or remains appropriate for the members.
Catch-all and compliance provisions are a feature of some SMSF trust deeds, often those prepared by authors who practice only part-time in superannuation. This paper summarises the important issues relating to those clauses and shows why they provide false security for trustees who rely on them.
The ATO has just announced an important administrative concession dealing with the tax consequences of pension underpayments – that is, when the pension payments for an account pension in a financial year fall short of the minimum required amount.
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