Accounting & Wealth Insights

On Wednesday 9 November 2016 the Government introduced its superannuation legislation which makes changes to the superannuation laws it originally announced in the 2016 Federal Budget.

Transitional provisions will provide for capital gains tax relief on assets that are forced to be transferred from pension phase to accumulation phase. An SMSF that has a member’s balance above $1.6m in pension phase will no longer be able to segregate assets for income tax purposes.

The ATO has given notice that it will continue to annually acquire data from credit and debit card providers relating to payments to businesses. The ATO will obtain data for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 income years on the identifying details of merchants with credit and debit card merchant facility and the amount and quantity of the transactions processed.

The ATO has given notice of two data matching programs, one relating to online selling and the other to share transactions.

As the end of the year is drawing rapidly to a close it may feel like the changes to the Asset Test for the Aged Pension have just been drawn up, however, these were announced in the 2015 Federal Budget.

The ATO has issued a warning that they are paying extra attention to taxpayers claiming higher than expected deductions for the 2015/16 income year. Assistant Commissioner Graham Whyte stated that the ATO’s ability to check work-related expense claims has become more sophisticated through use of technology and data analysis.

On 27 September 2016 the Government released another round of draft legislation implementing a number of the changes to superannuation it announced in the 2016 Federal Budget.