Financial planners need to act now to put their clients’ end-of-year tax strategies into place, according to OnePath head of technical sales strategy Andrew Lowe.
Salary sacrificing arrangements must be prospective in nature – that is, they must be put in place before the income is received, said Lowe.
"Proactivity around salary sacrificing arrangements at this time of year is really important. The longer you leave this, the fewer payments you’ve got to direct into superannuation," he said.
When it comes to bonuses, the client can only direct the employer to salary sacrifice the money before the amount is known, Lowe added.
"If the employer was sitting down and saying ‘we’re about to pay you $3,000’, at that point it would not be possible to deal with that amount other than to receive it as an assessable income payment in that [financial] year," said Lowe.
Another strategy that financial planners should address now is concessional superannuation contributions, said Lowe – especially considering the uncertainty about the concessional contribution limits in future years.
"We don’t have legislative certainty about what happens with concessional contribution limits for over 50s from 1 July this year. At the moment the law simply drops those contributions from $50,000 to $25,000 from 1 July 2012," he said.
With that uncertainty in mind, clients should be directed to take advantage of the $50,000 limit for this year, Lowe said.
"This might be the last year of the higher limit in its current form, or it may be the last time people with more than $500,000 can take advantage of the $50,000 concessional cap," he said.
