On 18 October, the Institute of Financial Professionals Australia provided its submission on the proposed extra 15% tax on superannuation balances above $3 million. We remain opposed to the extra tax due to the same reasons outlined in our earlier submission made to Treasury on 17 April 2023 and have urged the government to make five key amendments to the exposure draft legislation. One of the key recommendations is to remove unrealised capital gains from the calculation of earnings and instead use actual taxable income/earnings as a measure of earnings. Other recommendations include allowing losses to be refunded to offset any current tax liability, indexing the $3 million threshold, introduce an actual deferral regime to apply for the payment of the tax (including interest) to all funds (not just defined benefit funds), and exclude certain amounts from a member’s account balance.
Further details regarding our recommendations can be found in our submission and media release.