Your Retirement: Helping you with Superannuation

Your retirement is something that you should start thinking about sooner rather than later. Our experience shows that if you plan for your retirement as early as possible you can relax and concentrate on working towards that plan.

This information will help you understand more about your retirement and your self-managed superannuation fund. If you have any questions you can contact one of our SMSF specialists via the contact page.

Services - Planning Your Retirement

What is a Self Managed Super Fund?

A Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF) is a form of superannuation fund that is controlled by the members, giving greater control over their retirement savings than other types of superannuation funds such as industry or retail super funds. This includes wider investment choice and greater control over investments and flexibility in the payment of retirement benefits, such as pensions and annuities, directly from the fund.

SMSFs must be established for the sole purpose of providing benefits to fund members on retirement. Or, if the member dies before retirement, a benefit to that member’s dependants. This is referred to as the Sole Purpose Test.

Requirements for establishing an SMSF

To establish a SMSF, the fund must meet the following conditions:

1. Have fewer than 5 members
2. Each individual trustee of the fund must also be a member of the fund
3. Each member of the fund must be a trustee of the fund
4. No fund member can be an employee of another fund member, unless they are related, and
5. No trustee of the fund can receive remuneration for their services as a trustee.

An SMSF can alternatively have a company trustee (known as a corporate trustee). Each director of the trustee company must be a fund member, and each fund member must be a director of the company.

There are some exceptions involving single member funds and minors.

About Super Funds

Of the $1.23 trillion invested in super at 30 June 2010, $390.8 billion was in self managed super funds (SMSFs). That's 31.8% of all superannuation funds, with SMSFs now representing the largest slice of the super industry.

For many Australians, SMSFs offer 4 major advantages:

1. More control over investments.
2. Greater investment flexibility.
3. Generally lower fees than industry and retail funds.
4. On average, better performance than industry and retail funds.

More control and greater flexibility over investments

SMSF members can choose where their retirement savings are invested, with options including listed shares, bonds, listed investment companies (LICs), managed funds, ETFs and direct property.

This flexibility in investment options allows SMSF members to actively manage their investments. With a hands-on investment approach, SMSF members can quickly adjust their portfolios as markets change.

Lower fees and better performance

A Commonwealth Government report titled A Statistical Summary of Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (Dec 2009), based on ATO and APRA data, found SMSF members generally pay lower fees and that, on average, SMSF investments performed better than all other super funds over 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Benefits of our SMSF service

Kelly+Partners provides one of the most comprehensive SMSF administration and financial advisory services available.

We can provide you with:

1. Market leading services to meet the regulatory requirements of accounting, taxation and audit
2. Professional compliance advice and assistance.
3. Superannuation Taxation advice including access to effective strategies
4. Fee for service quality advice on financial strategies, estate planning and wealth protection
5. Competitive fees, and
6. Outstanding customer service.

Administration of your Super Fund

We provide the following sevices for your self managed super fund to ensure you meet your compliance requirements of your SMSF.

1. Preparing and lodging your SMSF’s annual income tax and regulatory returns
2. Preparing your SMSF’s annual financial statements
3. Preparing all necessary minutes of meetings
4. An annual audit of your SMSF
5. Preparing all paperwork required to start and administer pensions within your SMSF

Private Business Owner focus

As the leading advisors to Private Business Owners, Kelly+Partners is uniquely positioned to help dealer owners get their businesses and their personal wealth organised in a coordinated fashion. This owner-focused service model means that the business is viewed as the means to building wealth for the owner and not an end in itself.

1. A set protection
2. Tax management
3. Retirement planning
4. Wealth management

Why establish an SMSF?

Some advantages of an SMSF include:

1. Being able to invest, so that income and capital gains are taxed at the lower superannuation tax rates. These rates can be as low as 0% and no higher than 15%.
2. Being able to invest in a wide range of assets, including direct property, which are not normally available in traditional super funds.
3. Being able to co-ordinate your superannuation investment strategy with your non-superannuation assets and business.
4. Being able to structure income streams or pensions in a very tailored way, that suits you and your family.
5. Being able to structure your estate planning to ensure certainty about what happens to your assets when you pass away. An SMSF offers many advantages for estate planning over other ownership structures and over traditional super funds.
6. Being in control of all key decisions, including investment decisions, but still having the ability to take advice from specialists. You will need specialist accounting, taxation, investment, estate planning and strategic advice for your fund.
7. A n SMSF can give you the ability to transfer personally owned shares and some property into the fund
8. A n SMSF can be used to buy business premises for use in your business.

Benefits of SMSFs

Self managed super funds have many advantages over other types of super. Depending on your situation, these advantages can include:

1. More control over your investments
2. Greater investment choice
3. Flexibility to implement tax planning strategies
4. The ability to transfer personal assets into your SMSF, and
5. Pooling family assets to lower overall fees and to implement financial strategies involving the transfer of benefits between family members.

How an SMSF could benefit you

Depending on your individual situation, the advantages of an SMSF may include:

1. Tailored tax management on investment income and capital gains
2. Greater flexibility in investment choices and asset selection
3. Control over your total investment portfolio, with the ability to take account of the risk profile of all your assets, including those held outside superannuation
4. The ability to pool your resources with up to 4 fund members with similar financial objectives, such as family members
5. Maximum flexibility in establishing and managing pensions, including account based, transition to retirement and pensions
6. Greater flexibility for accessing Centrelink benefits such as the age pension
7. Investing in direct property
8. The ability to transfer personally owned listed shares, business real property and managed funds directly into your superannuation fund, and
9. The ability to own business real property in your superannuation fund, to assist your business cashflow.

Setting up and administering your SMSF

With our SMSF service, you’ll benefit from the significant advantages of establishing a self managed super fund without having to worry about ongoing administration and compliance.

Our SMSF services include:

1. Setting up your SMSF – We can help you with all the paperwork required to establish a self managed super fund and assistance in administering your SMSF.
2. Investing in your SMSF – Our expert Investment Advisors can help you develop your fund’s investment strategy and portfolio and provide ongoing investment advice and management.

Setting up your SMSF

Kelly+Partners Chartered Accountants can help you establish your SMSF.

We can help you set up a self managed super fund that is ready to use by:

1. Preparing your SMSF's trust deed
2. Completing and lodging your ATO application forms
3. Providing trustee declarations
4. Establishing a cash management account in your SMSF's name, and
5. Completing binding death nomination forms that provide guidance on how members want their assets distributed.

We also provide an investment strategy for your SMSF template to assist you in complying with all current legislation.