Life expectancy is a statistical indication of how long a person may live as opposed to an estimate of how long they will live. It is typically based on their year of birth, current age and gender. The most commonly used measure of life expectancy is ... Read more

Changes in the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) interpretation of the treatment of income derived by investments made with borrowed funds means trustees and their advisers need to consider benchmarking related party loans to enable 'commerciality' ... Read more

Perhaps the most obvious question to ask for any client considering the Age Pension is "how much is the Age Pension worth?" As described in our introductory paper, assigning a value to the Age Pension is difficult and depends on a range of ... Read more

Setting up a self-managed super fund (SMSF) has certainly been the flavour of the month for many Australian investors. Today, more than one million individual funds account for $559 billion or one third of total superannuation assets. But recently the ... Read more

In the absence of a binding death benefit nomination, those who control the trustee will control the destination of the death benefit: hence a battle for the control of the trustee will arise. Read more

Self managed super funds (SMSFs) continue to enjoy huge popularity. Read more

With the new penalties for SMSFs, trustees and advisers need to ask themselves: "should I be afraid, very afraid," or should they just be mildly concerned? Read more

A little known quirk in the preservation rules can have important implications for clients. This article explains how the quirk arises, and then how to use it to advantage clients. In a nutshell, the quirk allows trustees of super funds to 'cherry pick' ... Read more

The decision that clients make throughout retirement affect their pension entitlements. In turn, the pension has far reaching impacts on the cost of aged care. Read more

Australians are living longer than before, but there is a growing disparity between life expectancy and the superannuation balance of an average Australian. Read more