The Treasury Laws Amendment (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions) Bill 2025 and the Superannuation (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions) Imposition Bill 2025 reduce the tax concessions for people with total super balances over $3 million. They impose new taxes under a new Division 296 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.

Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, made a joint submission on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions) Bill 2025 consultation released by the Treasury over the Christmas- New Year break. We have concerns about the complexity, fairness and long‑term impact of the proposed measures on the superannuation system.

The draft laws introduce unnecessary administrative burdens and risk, creating inequitable outcomes for fund members.

Several key concerns stand out:

• Requiring small superannuation funds to obtain actuarial certificates to perform “relevant calculations and provide the attribution share”. We believe the requirement to use an actuary to provide this information via a certificate is unnecessary for small superannuation funds without one or more members with only accumulation monies and/or account-based pensions, which currently are not required to obtain an actuarial certificate.
• Excluding franking credits from Division 296 earnings. The proposed policy setting penalises super funds that have non-retirement phase income stream assets by seeking to use the current process in an unacceptable manner.
• Restricting notional pension income. We note that proposed paragraphs Sec 296-55(1)(a) and (b) do not allow exempt income to be less than nil.
• The absence of a Commissioner’s discretion leaves no mechanism to correct clearly anomalous or unintended outcomes something that already exists in other parts of the tax law. Similar principles should apply to proposed sections 296-40 and 296-55 (and any related regulations) – that is a taxpayer should be permitted to apply to the Commissioner to have an element of the formulae adjusted.

Given the complexity of the proposed legislation, and its related but yet to be seen regulations, we have good reason to believe that unintended and currently unforeseen adverse consequences could arise. It will be essential for government to promptly amend the law to remove these faulty, missing or defective elements as soon as they are identified in order to ensure the implemented law reflects the intended operation of the measure and interacts harmoniously with the other areas of the retirement savings ecosystem.

CA ANZ media releases related to this policy

• Changes to $3m super tax welcomed by peak accounting body
• "What is next the family home?" CA ANZ calls for urgent super bill review
• People should not have to borrow money to pay tax
• CA ANZ calls for superannuation tax concessions policy to be scrapped
• Proposed superannuation changes pose risk to future generations
• Superannuation policy in Australia is becoming like trying to shoot a moving target flying in circles over shifting goalposts