The retirement balances of women, low income earners and non-working spouses will be in much better shape with the introduction of the Government's superannuation splitting measures.
Superannuation splitting will allow contributions to be split' or shared with a spouse. This will allow non-working or low income spouses to accumulate their own superannuation, and gives families more choices in how they prepare for their retirement.
The initiative will be delivered by a Bill introduced in Parliament today and by amendments to regulations. A draft of the amendments to regulations was released today for public comment and can be found at www.treasury.gov.au. The regulations to be amended are the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Regulations 1993, the Retirement Savings Account Regulations 1997 and the Income Tax Regulations 1936.
The regulations will contain two important improvements on the previous draft versions circulated for public comment. The first improvement, as noted in the 2005/06 Budget, is that splitting will be voluntary on superannuation funds. The second major change will see the start date brought forward to 1 January 2006. This means that contributions made on or after that date will be eligible to be split where funds choose to offer this service to its members.
This measure will deliver on the Government's 2004 election commitment and will further broaden the accessibility of superannuation to individuals outside of the workforce.
The regulations will retain the 'annual split' model previously announced by the Government. This means following the end of each financial year, a fund member can request that contributions made in the previous financial year be split with their spouse.
Comments and feedback in relation to the draft regulations are sought from the public by 11 November 2005.