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Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC)

The CSHC assists qualifying senior Australians with health care costs as well as other benefits, such as the Seniors Supplement and a limited amount of concessions offered by Government bodies and certain private companies.

The CSHC is granted to those with income within the respective thresholds, which is $51,500 for singles and $82,400 for couples (combined).

Dividend imputation’s magical effect for Australian stocks

What a dreadful thing is the dividend-imputation tax system, if you believe its critics. They allege the abolition in 1987 of the double taxation of company earnings paid out to individuals forces investors to own too many shares, reduces the tax take and shrinks the amount of money companies have to invest.

Welcome to the April edition of e-Insight. This month we cover:

• New Social Security rates and thresholds from 20 March 2015
• New aged care fees and thresholds from 20 March 2015
• Centrelink confirm application of account based income stream ‘grandfathering’
• Taxation discussion paper

New Social Security rates and thresholds from 20 March 2015

Review of Australia’s Welfare System

The Government has released the final report of the review of Australia’s welfare system – A New System for Better Employment and Social Outcomes. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the existing welfare system and delivers a set of recommendations to simplify the system with a focus on getting people into work.

ATO issues further guidance on SMSF related party LRBAs

In this edition of e-Insight, we discuss two recent ATO Interpretative Decisions and the implications for related party lending to fund limited recourse borrowing arrangements (LRBAs). Where the terms of the loan (taken together) and the ongoing operation of the loan are not consistent with an arm’s length lender, the ATO is likely to determine that the arrangement gives rise to non-arm’s length income (NALI).

The mighty US dollar – its benefits and potential drawbacks

 In 1985, the finance ministers of France, Japan, the UK, the US and West Germany met at the Plaza Hotel in New York and agreed to the Plaza Accord.

Their concern? An overvalued US dollar, which had nearly doubled on a trade-weighted basis over the preceding five years, largely because the Federal Reserve had raised the cash rate to quell inflation.

Account based pension deeming rules from 1 January 2015

If you start a new account based pension from 1 January 2015, then deeming applies on the account balance for the Centrelink income test. This means new account based pensions are assessed in a similar way to bank accounts, term deposits and managed funds.

Germany’s policy stance is failing the Eurozone

Germany’s political leadership in a sense has already saved the euro; so far, anyway. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi would never have come up with a lender-of-last resort scheme to backstop the currency without the assent of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

ASFA Retirement Standard

The ASFA Retirement Standard benchmarks the annual budget needed by retirees to live comfortably or modestly in retirement. The figures are compiled by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) and released quarterly.
Assuming you own your home outright and are of good health, ASFA calculates the annual budget you’ll need in retirement is (September quarter, 2014):