After the Economics Legislation Committee recommended that the measure to extend the number of members in an SMSF to six be passed, the Liberal Party had just two sitting days to pass the measure this week.
With Labor opposed to the six-member SMSF measure, the Liberal Party yesterday agreed to remove the amendment for this measure from the Treasury Laws Amendment (2019 Measures No. 1) Bill 2019 in order to try and pass the bill.
The bill contained a raft of other unrelated measures including an amendment to extend concessional rates of excise to craft beer brewers.
Liberal MP Scott Buchholz said that it was “regrettable that the opposition would not support a sensible change to that law and thus provide additional choice for flexibility for Australians to manage their retirement savings”.
“The government continues to support this change and will seek progress on that at a later time,” Mr Buchholz said.
SuperConcepts general manager for technical services and education Peter Burgess previously predicted that the six-member SMSF amendment could be removed, given that it was the only controversial measure in the bill.
The measure to increase the SMSF member limit had mixed opinions, with some experts flagging the potential risks that additional members pose in terms of disputes between members and estate planning.
Some SMSF members intended to use the measure to add accumulation members to their fund to reduce the impact of Labor’s policy changes to franking credits.
Because some industry funds employ union officials as directors and pay them massive fees
As their monopoly position grows, their admin fees & insurance premiums continue to rise…lol
More favours to industry funds. Hope the franking credits attributable to pension members is not used to pay the tax for accumulation members whilst SMSF Pensioners have their franking credits stolen.
Labour would block this to make SMSF’s less attractive. Labour has a soft spot for the industry funds, hence their position.