| Government promises
easing of art and collectables super rules
Self-managed super funds have won major
concessions on a key recommendation of the Cooper review covering personal
assets.
The federal government yesterday
announced new rules preventing savers taking "personal benefit" from assets
such as paintings and cars in their self-managed super funds, but allowing
their continued acquisition, and stopping short of forcing their disposal.
It is the government's first formal
response to a Cooper recommendation.
Early this month the report of the
Cooper review, chaired by former Australian Securities & Investments
Commission deputy commissioner Jeremy Cooper, recommended a ban on
self-managed funds buying such investments and proposed a five-year
transition in which existing assets could be sold or moved to an
APRA-regulated fund.
The Cooper proposal had caused an
outcry in the art world over worries that not only would superannuants stop
investing in art, but they would also start dumping existing investments and
thereby cruel prices. |
Super Funds
Professional Association of Australia chairwoman Sharyn Long said the new
rules allowed investors to, for example, lend works to galleries for public
showing "as long as the premises are not owned by the super fund or any
related party". Ms Long was
involved in creating best-practice guidelines for the treatment of
collectables, which at one point had looked like a loophole whereby
superannuants could avoid taxation on the purchase of classic car or boat
for mainly personal use.
The announcement yesterday, which came out as a post-election commitment,
said there were "currently no enforceable guidelines around how these assets
can be held to prevent them from giving rise to such personal benefit", but
that if Labor were re-elected, "SMSFs can continue to invest in personal use
and collectable assets provided that they are held according to these new
legislative standards that will ensure the assets do not give rise to a
personal benefit and are held for the purposes of providing retirement
benefits."
Andrew Main - The Australian - July
31, 2010 |
