Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten has announced that the accountants’ exemption will be addressed within the next two weeks.
“We will not get the accountants’ exemption wrong,” he said at the Self-Managed Super Fund Professionals’ Association (SPAA) SMSF National Conference last week.
“Let me just state to you our principles: we want it to be cost-effective, we want people to be able to provide advice and obviously, it should be governed by a regime of rules [and] we want it to be civil. We do get that we need to resolve auditors’ registration at the same time.”
Shorten also said the government will do as it stated and will put legislation to the House of Representatives to raise the $25,000 superannuation concession cap back to $50,000.
The increase will apply to Australians aged between 50 and 60 years old from 1 July 2012 for balances below $500,000.
“There is unfinished work and that is an unsatisfactory feeling, I can assure you,” Shorten said.
“I don’t think we’ve got the answer quite right [and] whilst personally I can see some sense in the SPAA proposal of $35,000 and unlimited [account balances], the current fiscal constraints will mean that we have no choice and we must get this $50,000 business sorted out.
“I don’t think we’ve quite reached the final station to our destination on that matter, but we know we’ve got to do it and it’s important that when people get a chance to save money, [that they can] save money.”
Shorten said he would consider extending the start date of Future of Financial Advice.
“If it takes longer that July 1, 2012, if people need longer to transition, we’ll do that,” he said.
“But if you’re just secretly objecting to removing conflicted remuneration structures [or] if you just want to be able to sell your old practice at six times annual value rather than four times, then nothing I say is going to make you happy.”
SPAA director Peter Burgess told InvestorDaily he remains optimistic after hearing Shorten’s firm commitment to make some form of an official announcement in the next fortnight.
Burgess said that while it’s good news that the caps will be raised, they should be increased to $35,000 in the interim for everyone over age 50, regardless of the account balance.
“We understand that there’s a revenue cost to raising it to even $35,000, but there are also costs incurred in this new system that they want to introduce for $500,000 [balances], and also it is discouraging individuals from contributing, so we believe those types of costs need to be considered as well,” he added.
