{"id":930,"date":"2016-09-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/?p=930"},"modified":"2016-09-08T05:31:43","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T05:31:43","slug":"lawyer-warns-on-adverse-death-taxes-with-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/lawyer-warns-on-adverse-death-taxes-with-insurance\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyer warns on \u2018adverse\u2019 death taxes with insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>An industry lawyer has urged\u00a0SMSF\u00a0practitioners to carefully\u00a0scrutinise\u00a0any life insurance arrangements &#8230;..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8230;.. that flow through superannuation, with payments to non-dependants continuing to result in \u201cadverse tax ramifications\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"\" height=\"266\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plannerweb.com.au\/images\/lawyer-warns.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0  \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nEstate Planning Equation director Allan Swan says where the ownership of a life insurance policy is in a superannuation fund, SMSF practitioners need to think carefully about its tax ramifications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we have life insurance that flows via a superannuation fund and out as death benefits, and it\u2019s paid as a pension to say a surviving spouse, we don\u2019t have adverse tax ramifications,\u201d Mr Swan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In situations where it is paid to an estate and goes to a surviving spouse and young children, there are also no significant tax ramifications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[However], if it goes to non-dependants, non-dependants for tax purposes or it gets paid to a testamentary trust that includes non-independents, the ATO gets a 15 per cent death benefits tax by virtue of it being paid to the non-dependant, plus a 15 per cent surcharge because it\u2019s coming out as an untaxed amount, plus any levies that might be applicable,\u201d Mr Swan said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019ll see a tax bill of 34 per cent on life insurance coming via super being paid into an estate or being paid into a testamentary trust that includes say grandchildren, nieces and nephews \u2013 too wider class of beneficiaries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If a testamentary trust is being used and a super fund is involved, Mr Swan said SMSF practitioners should advise their clients to limit that to people who are death benefit dependant for the purposes of the Tax Act to ensure there is no taxation problem.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, death benefit dependants are a surviving spouse and\/or children who are either still minors or are still financially dependent or in an interdependency relationship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo if they fall into any or those categories, then the trust is limited to just those beneficiaries and can\u2019t be widened, then we\u2019ve got a trust that won\u2019t expose people to death benefits tax,\u201d Mr Swan said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s effectively a 30 per cent levy rate applying to life insurance funded death benefits. We\u2019re talking about a very high tax rate historically, in terms of death duties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>MIRANDA BROWNLEE<br \/>\nMonday, 22 August 2016<br \/>\nwww.smsfadviser.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>An industry lawyer has urged\u00a0SMSF\u00a0practitioners to carefully\u00a0scrutinise\u00a0any life insurance arrangements &#8230;..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}