Media Release

Very high superannuation account balances the starting point for tax concession discussions: New ASFA report

1 April 2015

Very high superannuation account balances the starting point for tax concession discussions: new ASFA report

The tax treatment of very high account balances should be the starting point for discussions around adjustments to superannuation tax concessions, rather than blanket changes that impact on all members, according to a report released by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) today.

Analysing the distribution and magnitude of very high superannuation account balances, the report found that there are over 200,000 people who have superannuation account balances in excess of $1 million, with around 70,000 with balances in excess of $2.5 million.

24,000 self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) members in the pension phase with balances in excess of $2 million received around $5.2 billion in tax-free income stream payments, or an average of around $216,000. This is compared with the 232,000 SMSF members with balances of less than $1 million who received a total of $8.9 billion, or an average of around $38,000. Note that data on the level and distribution of income stream payments and account balances is not available for members who have their superannuation in pooled vehicles.

With the release of the tax discussion paper encouraging wide-ranging debate on tax reform, ASFA CEO Ms Pauline Vamos says it’s appropriate for the community to start questioning whether it should fund growing tax concessions on very high balances.

“The superannuation system was set up to provide people with additional income to live a better lifestyle in retirement than that which can be provided by the Age Pension alone. Once a person has built up enough superannuation savings that will enable them to achieve a fairly high standard of living, it’s appropriate to question whether taxpayers should fund incentives to build wealth beyond this.

“A person who retires with a very high superannuation account balance is likely to have sufficient capital to draw an income stream that will allow them to live comfortably, even if they face medical or care expenses in the future or live considerably longer than expected. Above this level, the opportunity for people to use the concessionally-taxed super system for estate planning purposes increases.

“It is therefore appropriate to question whether or not the same tax concessions that are applied to lower balances should equally be applied to individuals with very high levels of super,” says Ms Vamos.

“It also poses problems when it comes to intergenerational equity, and whether it is fair for younger generations of taxpayers to be funding the tax concessions of older high net worth individuals.”

Ms Vamos says there are a number of policies the government could implement, including lifetime caps on concessional and non-concessional contributions and different tax treatment of high-balance accounts.

“Measures like these would help ensure people are using the superannuation system for its intended purpose, while also helping relieving some pressure on the federal budget,” Ms Vamos says.

“It’s also very important that as we make changes to superannuation, we give people enough time to plan and make changes to their financial strategy. The majority of the community participates in the system, and all taxpayers fund the concessions applied to it. Therefore building consensus among policymakers and the Australian people will be critical to ensuring its ongoing sustainability and success.

“There is growing bipartisan support for changes to the taxation of high balances, and we are pleased to see it being considered as part of the tax discussion paper process. We look forward to working collaboratively on the solutions required to ensure all Australians can live with comfort and dignity in retirement,” Ms Vamos concluded.

Click here to access the full report.

For further information, please contact:

Lisa Chikarovski: Manager – Consumer Strategy, Media and Public Affairs, 0451 949 300.

About ASFA

ASFA is the peak policy, research and advocacy body for Australia’s superannuation industry. It is a not-for-profit, sector-neutral, and non-party political national organisation, which aims to advance effective retirement outcomes for members of funds through research, advocacy and the development of policy and industry best practice.

Derek Thompson

Bestselling author, podcast host & founder

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Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Few speakers can match Derek Thompson‘s ability to synthesize mega-trends in society, labor, economics, technology, and politics. Put another way: Derek trawls the data sets and does the forecasting and deep reporting necessary to help us better understand how we live, how we vote, how we spend, and how we work.

In his paradigm-shifting #1 New York Times bestseller, Abundance (co-written with Ezra Klein), this award-winning journalist reveals how our policies and culture have pushed us into a world of scarcity (not enough housing, workers, or progress)—and offers a radical new path towards a world where housing is affordable, energy is plentiful, and innovation flourishes across industries.

He shares a compelling vision of a future where we have more than enough for everybody, and a practical, actionable roadmap for how to get there. It starts with taking more risks, building more expansively, and recognizing that we all have the power to create a world of abundance. “Everything’s utopian until it’s reality,” he says.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

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Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

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Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

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Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.