MYEFO: stealing super and calling it revenue

This year’s MYEFO includes some particularly dodgy changes to the treatment of superannuation and unclaimed monies.

Connecting people to their super is of course a good thing and the ATO already does some good work in this area (SuperSeeker), this ‘reform’ doesn’t help that. It takes people’s super accounts, transfers them to the ATO and calls it revenue.

These arrangements already apply to superannuation accounts worth less than $200 and untouched for over five years, these changes dramatically lower the bar to $2,000 untouched for more than 12 months.

This brings in $555m of revenue in 2012-13 mopping up accounts which already fall in this category and a further $120.5m over 2013-16 as more accounts tip over the threshold.

Similar changes apply to unclaimed bank accounts and life insurance yielding $93.4m of ‘revenue’ and unclaimed company monies for another $94m.

All told in 2012-13 these measures take $742.4m from people’s savings and call it government revenue (adding insult to industry ATO and ASIC will receive an extra $71m between them to implement it). Taking this into account the, already wafer thin, surplus shrinks from $1.1b to $357.6m

via www.taxpayers.org.au

Comments

[Linne]

1.

This exposes Swan for the fraud that he and this government really are. Swan will use every form of deception that he can muster to achieve a fraudulent budget surplus at the expense of middle and lower income Austraian's and worse still, children.

The lowering of the bar from less than $200 in five years to $2000 in one years is bald faced misappropriation of other peoples money to boost his arrogant ego.

To add insult to injury, Gillard is whining again about a comment make by Abbott. When is the false morally and ethically bankrupt woman going to grow up and stop using every thing that Abbott says as an excuse to bully him.

[ibbit]

2.

I was disappointed to see in the Australian that Tony Abbott has apologised for the comment about children or babies.

Gillard is a bully and Abbott dare not not let her bully him or the screaming, hissing fury that is gillard will become even more viperish that she already is.

It is to be hoped that loathesome Gillard is handed the same lesson that Bligh was in Queensland.

Blight thought she and her governments incompetence could be hidden behind a pile of excrement which she wanted stuck to Newman and his family.

Instead she wore the excrement and with some commonsense in Australia, Gillard will wear an even larger load of the stuff in her turn.

And yes, Swan is a fraud. But is that to be wondered at given the moral limitations of this government?

[Linne]

3.

I saw Abbott's apology more as patronising than an admission of wrong doing. I believe tht he was having a shot at her fishwife mentality.

I wonder how she would go if someone started in on her adultery? Would be interesting to see the reaction of Ann Summers and her very precious army of feminists.

[ibbit]

4.

I have just read the story as opposed to earlier, which was just a noting of the headline. I agree, it did come across as patronising. Could the words be called an apology? if not, the virago will scream ever louder. Maybe he is not as scared of her and her tongue as she would like him to be.

Re her adultery: Someone to be really admired is our PM. Perhaps that's where she got her experience with kids.

[Linne]

5.

Yeah, someone elses as the families broke up.

[Georgina]

6.

The MYEFO budget was certainly fraudulent. Swan is to be damned for considering that stealing super is revenue. Swan has already dipped into super funds 9 times, has raided the future fund and anything else he can get his hands on. The stealing of super funds will hurt our children who are working hard to try to make themselves independent when they retire. There will be no money left in Centrelink for peeople to be on a pension and their means when they retire, expecting what they have paid into the super funds, will last, will be sad to find it is not be the case. This ALP, Swan and Gillard in particular is ripping the "guts" out of Australia's hard working taxpayers.

[Georgina]

7.

Shows how desperate Gillard is to keep on at Abbott. He is very dignified in the way he has handled this defamation of his character which is totally untrue. Tony Abbott is a wonderful worker for charity, is a firefighter and a lifesaver. What has she done? Nothing for others. She is dishonest, morally and ehtically corrupt, a shreiking banshee, (we saw in the speech she gave which senseless people call "powerful") and spins and smears to make herself look good. She is doing the rounds now and the media are all out pushing her. How much are they paid to continually show her moving around the country and overseas. Very nice to have these overseas trips living it up and able to give billions of our taxpayers money to the heirarchy of overseas countries, the UN,bribes etc. while Australians are being hit with taxes and trying to find a livig. The ALP has spent billions on illegal immigrants which need not have been spent had they kept Howard's policy to deter them

[Allan]

8.

Hi Georgina. You are so right. If you have read my three part article about you will understand that ex-servicemen and women are presently fighting the government to regain what is lawfully theirs but the government isn't going to play.

Why hasn't the government got the money to pay these people their rightful superannuation entitlement? Because Paul Keating's government took the accumulated funds, that belonged to the service personnel through virture of the fact that they actually paid in the money while the government contributed nothing, and placed it into consolidated revenue. They then proceeded to waste those funds on a variety of useless projects and policies and the result is that there is nothing left to pay the ex-servicemen and women what is owed to them.

Sound familiar?

[Allan]

9.

Correction: If you have read my three part article about military superannuation you will understand . . .