Call for rollovers to improve gender super gap
A key industry body has advocated for a spousal rollover measure for super fund members to allow couples to even out their balances between them in an attempt to minimise the gender retirement gap.
In its Budget submission, the SMSF Association said that the measure would help mitigate issues caused by the introduction of the transfer balance cap, which it said had resulted in most couples having balances heavily weighted to one member as they hadn’t had enough time to adjust.
SMSF Association chief executive, John Maroney, said that while there were strategies to allow re-contributions, a rollover measure would be more effective. He pointed to spousal contribution tax offsets or contribution splitting, which he said were limited in their effectiveness due to contribution threshold, cap and withdrawal restrictions, and a lack of flexibility.
The Association also used the submission to call on the Government to lift the contribution gap for individuals over 50 years old to $35,000.
“We believe Government policy needs to incentivise and encourage Australians to take ownership of their retirement and contribute to their superannuation, particularly when they have greater financial capacity to do so,” Maroney said.
The submission said that the current cap of $25,000 negatively affected retirees’ ability to save an adequate amount of super to be self-sufficient in retirement.
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