QUARTER III | ISSUE 051 | THE PREMIER SELF-MANAGED SUPER MAGAZINE
2025 SMSF ROUNDTABLE
FEATURE
COMPLIANCE
STRATEGY
COMPLIANCE
SMSF roundtable Pressing issues discussed
Not fit for work Relevant insurance cover
Frailty risk Advice implications
CSLR funding A flawed mechanism
FEATURE
2025 SMSF ROUNDTABLE
There are plenty of issues dominating SMSF sector discussions, including the evolving trustee landscape, the increasing popularity of digital assets, persistent compliance problems and the one still playing out in real time – the proposed Division 296 tax. These topics and more were addressed among key industry stakeholders at the selfmanagedsuper 2025 SMSF roundtable.
12 selfmanagedsuper
FEATURE
Participants
Division 296 tax
Peter Burgess (PB) SMSF Association cheif executive
Shelley Banton (SB) ASF Audits head of technical
Mailene Wheeler (MW) Vincents superannuation advisory director
Craig Day (CD) Colonial First State head of technical services
Moderators Darin Tyson-Chan (DTC) selfmanagedsuper editor
Jason Spits (JS) selfmanagedsuper senior journalist
DTC: The proposed Division 296 tax is still dominating industry discussions. So where are we at with this measure? PB: I’m on the record as saying I don’t think the passage of this legislation today is any more certain than what it was at the beginning of the year. The pathway appears to be simpler for the government compared to the previous parliament, so it only needs the support of the Greens to pass this in the Senate, whereas in the old parliament, of course, they didn’t only need the Greens, but they needed three of the crossbench members as well. But right now the Greens are holding their ground and not willing to budge on their demands around a lower threshold of $2 million and to have an indexation mechanism included. So it is unclear where the policy is at and it’s looking more and more likely if the legislation is passed, it will have a deferred start date. There are lots of problems with backdating a tax like this and we face the prospect now, even if it is passed during the next parliamentary sitting, that it’s going to be backdated by over two months. If the government doesn’t pass it in the next sitting, the earliest it will be passed will be late October and we know that’s going to cause a lot of problems. For one, the total super balance calculation will be impacted. So people with a defined benefit pension, regardless of whether they are SMSF members or have more than $3 million in benefits, will have their total super balance impacted by this measure. It’s disruptive when you have a change to how your total super balance is calculated halfway through a financial year because it is such an important threshold as
it determines things like a person’s ability to make contributions. So we think there’s a good chance that they’ll have to defer the start date, which means the budget estimates for this measure will have to be revisited. So the forward estimates will have to be updated to factor in a lost year essentially. And we think that’s a real opportunity for the industry to negotiate with government on some of the features of this tax which so far have been non-negotiable and tell it there are other ways to achieve the desired goals. Perhaps only then we will have a chance of addressing the taxing of unrealised capital gains. It’s very difficult to pass legislation in one sitting unless something like a guillotine motion exists. This will allow the government to pass it very quickly and bypass the debate stage and also the committee stage. We think the government is reluctant to pass this bill without the support of the Greens and feel what it is trying to do is put a guillotine motion in place. Without this element, the bill will take a lot longer to pass. DTC: So there were no new developments at the recent Economic Reform Roundtable? PB: Looking at some of the roundtable transcripts, it looks like deputy opposition leader Ted O’Brien did mention it. He raised the measure in the context of superannuation tax and expressed his concerns about it, but we haven’t heard anything else as to whether the policy was discussed. We had our say beforehand, that this is about productivity and improving productivity, not introducing taxes that do the opposite is a good place to start. DTC: Is delaying the starting Continued on next page
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