Beware retiree anger
SUPERANNUATION was first introduced by the electricity supply companies in 1950 or thereabout, but only applied to male workers while women had some other scheme, not so good. Superannuation initially started with payment from the employer to pay a calculated amount into the employee’s fund. It was intended as a payment on aged retirement to eliminate people from getting the aged pension.
However, this has been abused over the years and can be claimed before retirement, and then either as a pension or collect the lot and spend it on an overseas holiday, and then collect the pension. I took mine as a pension when I retired when interest rates were 17 per cent, and went on managing the money as a pension.
Before the report was sent to the Australian Taxation Office it was put together by my accountant along with the auditor’s report.
It was not introduced until the Keating regime many years later and it applied to everybody. Every new government make changes until the workers had to get familiar with the latest changes, particularly the clerks who had to work with these changes. It was Paul Keating who introduced the payment of the amount of tax the companies had to pay and claimable for shareholders to claim as franking credits.
John Howard made the next big tax change and allowed those paying this tax it would be tax free to help the independent retirees to improve their living standards.
This was well received as anybody who is an independent retiree knows they do not receive council discounts on their rates and do not receive all the goodies the government- paid pensioner gets, even though the retirees have tried.
In addition, the Australian Taxation Office considers the money from the fund for daily living is income and not a drawdown on capital.
Now, should Labor win the next election they intend to take this off the retirees to use somewhere else to make somebody happy, but not what Mr Keating thought was a good intent on his part. So, it is important which party retirees vote for at the next election. GARTH HARRIGAN,
Aitkenvale.