The Actuaries Institute has released its submission in response to Treasury’s discussion paper entitled, Better regulation and governance, enhanced transparency and improved competition in superannuation (released in November 2013). The Institute raised a number of issues. In relation to regulation, the Institute expressed its concern about the potential additional regulation of actuarial services via the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA). It said it would be appropriate to exempt actuaries from the TASA, in particular, in respect of services that are specified in tax legislation that require actuarial advice and/or certification.
The Institute also raised issues regarding Div 293 tax. It said implementing this new tax requires regulations to be issued which specify the method of determining notional defined benefit contributions for this purpose. The Institute recommended that the Notional Tax Contributions (NTCs) already in use for concessional contribution limit purposes also be used for the new tax. It said this approach would avoid the considerable confusion that would arise if 2 different notional contribution amounts are required for each defined benefit member for tax purposes.
In relation to MySuper and Choice product dashboards, the Institute said only the Net Investment Return should be disclosed. It said this would remove the issue of disclosure of 2 returns introducing unnecessary complexity in the dashboard.
The submission (dated 12 February 2014) is available on the Institute website.
[LTN 30, 14/2/14]