We have been contacted by many of you, our 130,000 shareholders, who are concerned about the taxing of unrealised gains in superannuation, and the significant unintended consequences this illogical and unfair legislation will have on you, and the retirement security of Australians. We have written a discussion paper ‘Critiquing the Proposed Taxation on Unrealised Gains in Superannuation’ to assist the current debate.
In our February 2024 submission to the Senate, we opposed the proposed taxing of unrealised gains and the failure to index the $3 million balance threshold. We also provided a simple solution to eliminate the need for a tax on unrealised gains, which unfortunately, to date, has not been adopted.
Sometimes when governments propose legislation, they are not aware of the unintended consequences that may arise. Our general disappointment with the government’s lack of engagement with business, industry, and superannuation leaders has prompted us to put together a discussion paper, which you can read here, to highlight the impacts of this proposed legislation.
I would like to specifically acknowledge non-partisan business leaders such as the Chairman of Australia’s second largest company, CSL, Brian McNamee AO, and Group Vice Chairman of MA Financial Group and Chairman of the Sydney Swans, Andrew Pridham AO, who have spoken out strongly against the government’s proposal to tax unrealised gains.
Our concern is not the increase in the tax rate to 30% on balances above $3 million, it is the significant negative impact of this tax on profits you may never realise, and the effect it will have on the behaviour of the $4.2 trillion pool of superannuation assets in Australia, particularly the $1.1 trillion in self-managed super funds.
There will be significant unintended consequences, including:
- negative economic impact
- loss of risk capital
- negative impact on farmers and small businesses
- capital flight
- capital flow to housing
- forced assets sales
- lack of indexation disadvantaging future generations
- increased emigration
We will continue to advocate against this policy regardless of the upcoming Federal election result. We welcome your review of our research paper, and should you have any feedback or situations of unintended consequences that this legislation will have on you, please contact us. You can contact me (0412 242 712), our Chief Financial Officer Jesse Hamilton (0401 944 807), or April Lowis (02 9258 4915) from our Investor Relations team or via email at [email protected].
