Superannuation tax break for low paid workers
LOW-INCOME earners are in line for a major retirement boost from a tax refund on their superannuation contributions.
The move will help overcome unfairness in the tax system where low-income earners do not get a tax break, or are sometimes taxed at a higher rate, when they put money into super.
The refund, which will provide up to $500 a year extra super for low-income workers, would be worth about $35,000 by retirement
RBA GOVERNOR MISUNDERSTOOD?
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Glenn Stevens, is understood to be annoyed at the way the daily financial media used his monthly address last week to claim interest rates are set to rise in August. This, the RBA insists, is both misleading and misses the most important point of the speech which praised the overall state of the economy amid mainstream media reports of mainly gloom.
ALL EYES ON NEXT WEEK
Monday June 27th may be just another day for most of the population but for the economics community, it is when the next set of official inflation figures are released. And if they are too high and outside the RBA’s stated comfort zone of three percent, then the RBA is certain to include them as added pressure to lift the basic cash rate in early July or August
LOST SUPERANNUATION
The federal government is urging millions of Australians to come forward and claim their portion of $18.8 billion in lost superannuation.
People only need to provide their tax file number and they’ll know if they have sleeping money stored in government coffers.
Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten says that as the system grows so does the number of unclaimed accounts.
“The system is now 20-years-old,” Mr Shorten told reporters on Tuesday at the program launch.
“Ten or 15 years ago when you were getting 3 or 4 per cent and the account balances were quite low, people perhaps weren’t as engaged.”
A total of 5.8 million unclaimed super accounts are now under government management, with an average $3,200 balance in each
“I can tell you if I lost $3,200 I’d spend some time trying to track it down,” Mr Coombe said at the launch
Many of the accounts hold money from short work assignments that people may have undertaken early in their career and failed to claim.
Any super account that does not receive a contribution in more than two years is automatically transferred to a government account and classed as lost until someone claims it… contact us to help you track down lost superannuation.