Super’s ballooning budget black hole

Monday 15 December 2014

The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), released yesterday, contained the below table showing the cost of Australia’s largest tax expenditures, the biggest of which are Australia’s superannuation concessions:

As you can see, the concessional taxation of superannuation entity earnings – whereby earnings within super funds are taxed at just 15% before the age of 60 and 0% afterwards – is forecast by the Treasury to cost the Budget a whopping $18,450 million in 2015-15, increasing to $26,950 million by 2017-18.

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.