SMSF practitioners told to take immediate action on CGT relief

Perpetual senior manager of strategic advice Colin Lewis said SMSF practitioners with clients affected by the $1.6 million transfer balance cap will need to consider whether their clients should take advantage of the CGT transitional rules listed in the super reforms.

“The government is allowing people to reset the cost base on assets. The reason they’ve done this is that they don’t want to disadvantage people where they’ve got to revert back to the accumulation phase,” explained Mr Lewis.

Mr Lewis warned, however, that SMSF practitioners and their clients only have between November and 30 June next year to reset the cost base.

“It may mean work and time so you don’t want to leave it till June to think about it. It’s something SMSF practitioners should be getting onto now,” he said.

“You may not want to reset it right away today, but you need to be aware of what the implications are of what you’re doing and what assets you want to do the reset for.”

The legislation allows the cost base to be reset on an asset by asset basis, he said, and if any assets have experienced a loss then it won’t be in the client’s best interests to reset the cost base of that particular asset.

“So if you’re at a loss, of course you’re not going to reset your cost base, but if you do have unrealised capital gains then it would be wise to reset the cost base to ensure that going forward you’re only going to be taxed on the upside of the growth from July next year,” he said.

“The message really is that people really need to look at this, advisers, practitioners, trustees need to look at their position, and work out whether it’s relative for them to do it. You can’t all of sudden come to the 1st of June next year, and think you’ve got a month to do this because you might run out of time.”