The Superannuation Laws Amendment (MySuper Capital Gains Tax Relief and Other Measures) Bill 2013 was today passed by the House of Reps with 2 Government amendments and now moves to the Senate.

The amendments made to the Bill insert a new Sch 3, which will amend the Fair Work Amendment Act 2012 to:

  • allow an employer to make contributions for default fund employees to whom a modern award applies to a superannuation fund in respect of an employer MySuper product, subject to the product being approved by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) and specified on a Schedule of Approved Employer MySuper Products;
  • establish a 2-stage approval process under which an Expert Panel of the FWC will assess employer MySuper products to determine whether they are in the best interests of the relevant default fund employees;
  • change the maximum number of funds that can generally be specified in a modern award in relation to a generic MySuper product from 10 to 15;
  • ensure that the new requirements in modern awards in relation to both generic MySuper products and employer MySuper products do not apply before 1 January 2015;
  • provide that the new requirements in relation to employer MySuper products will not apply in respect of a modern award (eg a modern enterprise award) made between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2017, until the second 4-yearly review of default fund terms.

The Bill proposes to amend the ITAA 1997 to facilitate the MySuper reforms by providing income tax relief to superannuation funds where there is a mandatory transfer of default members’ account balances to a MySuper product in another superannuation fund.

[LTN 117, 20/6/13]