The Government announced its response to the Retirement Income Streams review and released the final report, as part of the Budget.
This delivers on our commitments to review the minimum drawdown rules for account-based pensions and regulatory barriers to the development of appropriate income stream products in the Australian market.
The Government has accepted the Review’s recommendations.
In particular, we will remove tax barriers to the development of new retirement income products from 1 July 2017 by extending the tax exemption on earnings in the retirement phase to products such as deferred lifetime annuities and group self-annuitisation products which do not currently qualify for this exemption.
This will facilitate the development of new products that could provide more flexibility and choice for Australian retirees, and help them to boost living standards and better manage consumption and risk in retirement.
We will also clarify how the new retirement income products will be treated under the Age Pension means test ahead of 1 July 2017.
The report can be found on the Treasury website.