Andrea Slattery
A parliamentary committee recommendation that the Federal Treasury should model the long-term savings of superannuation tax concessions to Government via lower spending on the age pension has been warmly welcomed by the SMSF Association.
The Association’s CEO/Managing Director Andrea Slattery said this was a key recommendation in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue’s report on the tax expenditure statements that was just released.
“Cutting future dependence on Government welfare is a key objective of the superannuation system, providing the rationale for the tax concessions.
“In light of this goal, which the Association has always supported, it is inconceivable that our public policy measurements do not attempt to capture the value of the reduction of future Government expenditure created by the tax concessions.
“Estimating the longer-term costs and benefits of superannuation will allow for a better quality and more nuanced policy debate around superannuation.”
Slattery says the committee’s recommendations validates the Association’s concerns that the use of the Tax Expenditures Statement’s (TES) simplistic approach that highlights the large amount of revenue forgone because of the tax concessions have skewed the public debate to a short-term argument over Government revenue requirements.
“The need to have accurate costings of these tax concessions have never been more relevant and important considering the current policy debate regarding how to tax superannuation and superannuation’s objectives.
“The committee’s recommendations to include information on revenue collected through superannuation taxation and developing comparisons of the benchmarks used to estimate the size of tax concessions will also improve the debate around tax concessions,” she says.
