The conventional wisdom is that most people who can start retirement phase pensions should do so as soon as possible. Here are a few things to weigh up when deciding whether or not to start a pension before 1 July 2021.

There are some occasions when a pension can be paid to a person well before retirement, but timing matters and it’s important to understand the system’s quirks.

The general TBC will increase to $1.7m from 1 July 2021. The quirky method for translating that to individual clients will create plenty of confusion. It is fertile ground if the government really is keen to simplify laws and remove red tape.

A standard account based pension can offer members the opportunity to take commutations – a lump sum now in exchange for lower income stream payments in the future. Why do we care whether it’s a partial commutation or a full commutation?

Almost all pension members will occasionally draw more than the minimum pension amount in a given year. If so, it is critical to think carefully about how those extra payments should be treated and documented before taking the payment.

We often hear that clients who take more than the minimum required from their pension accounts each year should treat the extra amount as a commutation rather than a pension payment. But when does this really make sense?

Like Meg Heffron, I was torn when thinking about this year’s Federal Budget. Was I hoping for no changes to super to provide some stability for our clients or was I hoping for a few changes to get my teeth into. And the result was ….

One side effect of the current ECPI regime is that a fund's tax exemption on investment income might be calculated using the segregated method for some periods of the year but the actuarial percentage method at other times.

We have seen cases where retirees have lost access to their Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) or seen a reduction in their Age Pension because they lost their account-based pension (ABP) grandfathering by rolling over or restarting the pension.

Once upon a time, there lived many retirees that rolled over their superannuation savings to commence what was known as a “complying income stream”.

TRIS's have been excluded from the actuarial % calculation since 1 July 2017. While they are included once the member turns 65 or retires, the process is not automatic. Without care, the TRIS will accidentally continue to be ignored.

In our article “Why isn’t my actuarial % as high as I thought it would be?” we highlighted a number of scenarios where an actuarial certificate may appear to give an odd result.