Shadow Assistant Treasurer Senator Mathias Cormann says the reason a company director was hit with a 78% tax rate on inadvertent excess super contributions (the Verschuer AAT case – see above) was because the Government had not fixed a problem that has existed for the last 2 1/2 years.
Senator Cormann said more than 65,000 Australians had been hit with excess contributions tax in 2010-11 and the number has been growing in recent years. Depending on individual circumstances, he said the Federal Government’s tax take can be as high as 93%. “This is completely unacceptable and should long have been fixed”, the Senator said.
Senator Cormann said that, based on the most recent figures available, the Government had “collected more than $108m in excessive additional taxes from people making additional voluntary savings to help them achieve a self-funded retirement, but where somebody along the way made an inadvertent mistake”.
If the Coalition wins the next election, Senator Cormann said it will “properly address this issue of excess contributions to make sure that Australians are not unfairly penalised for genuine unintended errors when making superannuation contributions”.
Source: Shadow Assistant Treasurer media release 22/0113/MC, 22 January 2013
[LTN 14, 22/1/13]