Robyn Jacobson
Hello and welcome to TaxVibe, a podcast by The Tax Institute. I'm Robyn Jacobson, the senior advocate at The Tax Institute and your host of today's podcast. On the show, I chat with some of the tax profession's brightest minds, drawing on each case unique perspective to give you valuable and practical insights you won't hear every day. We hope you enjoy this episode of TaxVibe.
I'm joined by Liz Westover, FTI, a partner and national SMSF leader at Deloitte. Liz is responsible for the firm's SMSF Service offering, providing compliance and advisory services to the firm's clients. She has extensive experience in superannuation and has strong capabilities in the technical and practical application of superannuation and associated tax laws. Liz is a regular commentator on superannuation and SMSFs and has been involved in superannuation policy, development and advocacy, regularly liaising and consulting with government regulators and stakeholders on technical, legislative and policy matters for many years. Liz is a fellow of The Tax Institute, a fellow Chartered Accountant, a CA SMSF specialist, and holds a Bachelor of Business from the University of South Australia, as well as a master of legal studies from the University of New South Wales. She's also the chair of The Tax Institute's Superannuation intensive organising committee, with the online intensive coming up offering 8 hours of CPD on the 26th and 27th of March. Liz, welcome to TaxVibe.
Liz Westover
Thanks Robyn, lovely to be here.
Robyn Jacobson
Well, superannuation is always a moving area. It's always subject to so much regulation, constant changes and it's always good to focus particularly on their SMSF sector, which does represent a large chunk of the market. So we're going to cover quite a few topics in this discussion today, but let's kick off with the caps limits and thresholds. Now there are so many of them, and in our recent submission to Treasury, the pre-budget submission, we note a number of things such as inconsistent indexation or the number of different caps and rates and thresholds across the superannuation sector, in fact more broadly across the whole system. And really look at tax and superannuation there are so many caps and thresholds to be mindful of. We've also got challenges with certain caps being indexed and certain caps not. So can you read through some of the recent changes and what we're going to see coming up?
Liz Westover
Absolutely. And we do have quite a significant change coming up around indexation has been an increase in the concessional contributions from 1 July 2024. Broadly, your comments around change is our constant in the superannuation industry and it is frustrating. This particular cap, the concessional contributions cap is indexed via AWOTE and our transfer balance caps, for example, is indexed against CPI. So we have this sort of mismatch. In some years we get indexation on one and not the other. Sometimes it's both and sometimes it's none. For this year, it's the concessional contributions caps churn to get indexed. So we're seeing an increase in the cap from 27 and a half. $30,000 always goes up in those $2,500 increments. So $30,000 per annum from the 1st of July 2024. And because the concessional contributions cap is coming up, the non-concessional contributions cap is always four times the concessional cap. So we now have a non-concessional cap of $120,000 from the 1st July 2024. So no indexation on the transfer balance, couple of general transfer balance cap. So that's going to stay at $1.9 million and what does that mean, that threshold for which people's total super balance is for their ability to make non-concessional contributions caps? So I'll keep going on that one. I want to move all the gap. So your ability to use the bring forward provisions for non-concessional contributions caps is always starts with the general transfer balance cap. So anything above that balance on the 30th of June or the previous financial year dictates your ability to make non-concessional, period over that threshold. No concessional contributions for you. If you are under that, then we start to see these thresholds around your ability to use the bring forward in three years, two years or not at all, and that is set by the general transfer balance cap lets the non-concessional contributions capped for the year. So notwithstanding the $1.9 million isn't changing, those thresholds are changing. So it's now going to be less than $1.66 million. You can use the full three year bring forward provision. So $360,000 in that year. If the next cap is 1.66 million to 1.78, you can do two years bring forward to do $240,000 worth of non-concessional contributions, 1.78 to 1.9. No. Bring forward. So just the annual non-concessional cap at 120 and then of course, over 1.9. No non-concessional contributions. So no wonder it gets confusing. I'm sort of set looking at all these sort of thresholds and so on, but a renewed opportunity for people to make contributions.
Robyn Jacobson
So when you look at the different ways of indexation, you're fed to everybody, which is the or I was depending on your pronunciation, the average weekly ordinary time earnings versus CPI. Yeah, liquid need to unpack all the policy decisions made many decades ago as to why some use one basis of indexation and other caps and thresholds use another. But if we look across superannuation for example, the $500,000 retirement exemption limit has never been indexed. We have legislative changes to increase the ESG rate, which we're going to come to shortly. And then we've got these other modes of indexation for these particular caps and transfer balance of course, and concessional and non-concessional. It does make it very confusing. And while there is a limited amount of discretion where people do get it wrong, particularly in the case of concessional non-concessional caps, it's not easy to navigate this. No, it's really not. And you've got to stay close to your advisors. The ICRC website is actually very good, as is the money Smart website is very good for information and updates and so forth. I guess the other comment I want to make about indexation as well, because we know it's a big issue with respect to Division 296 tax and I'm going to be talking a little bit about that I think because we saw CPI on sort of inflation really increase quite significantly, which mean we had that increase in the transfer balance cap two years in one year effectively and no one really anticipated that that would ever happen.
Liz Westover
So I believe that there's a bit of a fear around automatic indexation because you do lose that control about when those thresholds actually increase, especially with due to nine six, it's actually not a deal breaker for me. I know the industry is pushing very hard for some sort of automatic indexation and there is a lot of merit in that. But so long as there is an ability to index at future times, which there will be and it might be every budget submission the Tax Institute does from here on in, there'll be a call for an indication of that cap, but I don't say they all and end all with respect to Div two on six I believe will be indexed over time anyway.
Robyn Jacobson
One area in particular complexity is the transfer balance cap and now it's designed to of course limit how much you can hold in this tax free earnings environment, in pension funds. But with the personal transfer balance cap, you don't automatically get the benefit of all the indexation when it does go from 1.7 up to 1.9 million as it did last year. You have to then work out your personal or proportionate amount of that increase based on how much you've already utilised. And the more times this gets indexed, the more complicated this is going to be.
Liz Westover
Yeah, that's exactly right. So whilst the general transfer balance cap gets indexed, you're right, personal doesn't necessarily. And once you commence an income stream you now have a personal transfer balance cap. So for someone who is fortunate enough to start an income stream in 2017 with $1.6 million, that's it for them. They will never be able to start anymore income stream subject to commutations and so forth. But they will not be able to start new income streams because they have already met 100% of the cap as it was then. So then means, depending on what your proportion of the cap that applied. So if I had only is 50% of the cap at the time, I would be able to use the remaining remaining cap plus 50% of the indexed amount. So you're absolutely right. The more indexation we have, the more complicated it gets and the more likely it is we're going to create a spreadsheet around it to make sure that we actually get it right.
Robyn Jacobson
Where would we be without Excel spreadsheets.
Liz Westover
Exactly.
Robyn Jacobson
Moving on to some release of data. Now, there are two aspects to my question to you on this. We've seen for many years data on what they called the tax gaps and in particular the superannuation guarantee tax. I mean can unpack that. But recently on the 22nd of February, for the first time, the share release data around illegal early access estimates. So in other words, they're estimating the extent to which they think people have access their superannuation illegally and early. So this is interesting to draw some insights and I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
Liz Westover
Yeah, look, it's an interesting piece of work and I think it was delivered quite well by the tax Office in a bit of a call to arms by the industry to try and put this out. It wasn't a criticism, personal thought. It was just, you know, really did come across as we've all got a role to play in making sure that we have a secure superannuation system. So that was quite welcome. One of the interesting factors I thought about it was that the main body of work was around the 2021 year and I think the numbers were $256 million they believe was illegally early released, which was actually a decline from the prior financial year of about $380 million. But you might recall 2021 was the year of COVID, and we had a lot of people applying for release of their $10,000, in fact, twice over applying for. I believe there might be some numbers in there. There are actually people who were reported as illegally in early release, but it may have been that they just withdrew their $10,000 without waiting for the release authority from the tax office. So there's an element of that. So I'm actually very interested to see subsequent years results. But also the Tax Office is doing a lot of work to try and stop illegal early release. As you can imagine, there's a range of activities including review of registrants. So if they believe there's any risk factors around it, they'll pick up the phone, potentially talk to the trustees, make sure they actually understand what it is they're doing and why they're doing it, that type of thing. And they believe in the 2021 year they've stopped about $168 million from coming out of a system that might otherwise have not intervened in that way. So that's a really good thing. I see that as as a real positive. But the interesting to see some trends in future years and just make sure we're all doing our part, doing the right checks and so forth to stop any of this illegal early release.
Robyn Jacobson
There's support for the proposition that many of the funds that were involved in this early release were in fact newly established funds.
Liz Westover
Yeah, that's often the case. And in fact the ATO sees light on non lodgment of a first year fund as a significant red flag around illegal early release. So, you know, they are very keen to make sure that the right people are actually registering for these funds. And there is a concern that a lot of these first year funds are actually as a result of promotions and scams and so forth. So they are using other means to be able to crack down on some of those promoters as well, to make sure that they're not encouraging people to sit up in a submissive role over there. They're after regulated funds. Money's into a dismissive and then take a very nice cut for the privilege of assisting and so I'm no fan of providers and scammers. So anything that they can do to shut that down and it's probably worth a plug for tax office and have dedicated pages for people to be able to report these promoters and any scams that they actually see. You can do it anonymously if you if you would like to what email, phone, whatever means you need to. And in fact, if you are in a tax adviser or an accountant, I imagine that the the Tax Institute would help facilitate some of those reports as well if there was really sort of any significant issues around that. But personally seeing the result of it where people have been encouraged to set up this massive promised property with lobbies and so forth, and the money's gone, it's just gone. And in a lot of cases it's with people who didn't have money to lose in the first place. So a lot of money to lose in the first place. Nor do they have the resources to try and fix it or get the advice that they need or know how to engage with the tax office. It is a big problem.
Robyn Jacobson
And regulation aside, these are heartbreaking stories because it's people's financial future. The analysis also found that around $200 million of prohibited loans have been made by self-managed funds, but then around three quarters of this have been repaid. So what are you seeing out there when it comes to making loans to members?
Liz Westover
Look, I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding. And again, this is sort of where the law just you know, you've sort of got to have this a bit of a knowledge and trust your advisers and get in touch with your advisers before you actually go and do these things. But there's a general prohibition on dismissive or super lending to members or relatives.But of course, it's called an in-house asset and there is restrictions on the amount of these in house assets you can have. So Fund can have no more than 5% of the total market value of this asset in an in-house asset. So we believe that that number reported by the office include people who would have gone over the 5% limit. So often when that happens you've got a breach of the 5% limit. It is reported as a disqualified by order. It's reported to the Tax Office, but part of that process is actually putting a plan in place to repay it. So it's good to see that those plans are actually in place and those amounts are being paid back as they're required to do so, to continue to comply with that with relevant law about the funds.
Robyn Jacobson
So we know that this illegal early access estimate will be done on an annual basis from now on. But for many years we've always had this ESG tax gap analysis. So what is this telling us about the difference between the amount of ESG that the expects should be paid and what is actually being collected by the funds?
Liz Westover
Yeah, look, the numbers are still quite staggering. It really is a little bit frightening. And I think that's why there is broad support for the new payday super. I write down the mechanics behind that once we get it right. And the latest numbers is that we've still got a 2021. The ATO figures with a gap of 5.1%, which means that people are still not getting the super guarantee that they're actually entitled to be paid from their employers.And that is that's a staggering figure really, and it's for a variety of reasons. I've seen in my own family where employers think they can call someone a contractor, and so long as they issue an invoice, it doesn't matter that they're actually for every other purpose or every other, you know, look and feel they're an employee. But I think because I'm a contractor, they don't have to pay extra for them. And in my family's particular case is, please don't do anything about it. Don't say anything. I like my job so people get away with it simply by calling them a contractor. So there's a lot of that and there's people who miscalculate amounts, and then there is a cohort of other employers who simply do not remit but are employed. And they're the ones I think we really need to focus on. I believe the law needs to be better for people who make mistakes. And it's not this sort of catastrophic outcome for people who make a mistake. And the way the law is written at the moment is it it's quite impactful from minor error can be quite significant. But by all means, anyone who's not paying the rate for their employees should absolutely have the book thrown at them that those deliberate nonpayment should be dealt with appropriately.
Robyn Jacobson
So all the figures when we talk about a gap of 5.1%, the positive spin could be that nearly 95% are actually meeting their obligations. So 5% doesn't sound like a lot, but the problem is when you translate into actual dollars, it's three and a half billion dollars in 2021 that wasn't paid in super staggering figure, isn't it?
Liz Westover
It's an unbelievable number. And when you think about that money that's not going in and the earnings that it could be doing in the way it could be invested in meantime. And, you know, what's been opportunities have been missed by people who are having that money invested for them. So, yeah, we have a problem. We need to deal with that. And I believe there are things being done to do that.
Robyn Jacobson
Yes, there are, and we'll get to that shortly. I also add that this isn't a one off fee or an anomaly. If we look at the last six years for 15, 16 through to 2021, which is the year that we have the gap analysis available for the net gap was more than 3 billion in five, six years. So this is absolutely a trend. It's not a one-off.
Liz Westover
Yeah, that's exactly what we need to do. We need to do more. But I think, you know, it will probably take time, I guess, for all of these measures to really take effect. But the impact that it does have on people's retirement savings is is huge. So if we get that money in there, it's less people in the age pension.
Liz Westover
Eventually it's more invested, it's better retirement outcomes, it's a win-win.
Robyn Jacobson
So let's move on to Division 296 and for the we vote all those that haven't yet and the legislation references Division 296 is a proposed new division in the Income Tax Assistant at 97 which is going to tax the earnings that relate to superannuation balances above $3 million, add an additional 15%, it's expected to affect around 80,000 people. Initially from when it kicks in 1st July 2025. But let's unpack this a bit more because whilst it looks like a fairly small proportion of the population around, I think they're talking point .5% in total. We've got obviously concerns about what happens in the future and the really big concern around this taxation of unrealised gains. So yes, motivations from you on, is this something to be concerned about of where we at with this proposed measure?
Liz Westover
It's a very hard one to articulate, particularly in the media. And the first thing I'll say is that my observation is that for the most part, people do not have a problem with an additional tax on earnings for people with high superannuation balances. That is not the trend. Most people are very much on board with this. The problem that people have with it is the manner in which they are going to be taxed and this division 296 actually has very little bearing on an additional tax on earnings for those relevant people. It's a brand new tax and that's the way that people have to think about it. And it is quite literally a tax on people who have had $3 million at the end of a financial year. And that'll that'll start from the 26 financial year. So we put balances on the first July 25. The report balances again on the 30th of June 2026. And if you got more than $3 million on 30th June 2026, we work out what your earnings is in that period and if you do have positive earnings, then you're going to be up for this division 296 tax. So by virtue of the fact that it's assessed against total super balance means it incorporates everything including unearned income or growth in assets, which is just not a feature of our tax system and the inequity around that and the possible. Where does it stop? What else are we going to tax that we previously haven't taxed on? Unearned income is a lot of concern, not just in super but across the tax industry. So there are other proposals that are going through at the moment. That Division ten on six legislation has gone to the House of Representatives, that it has not passed the House yet, but it has been referred to a Senate economics committee. They were due to report in April and that has now been pushed back to the 10th of May for them to report back. And whilst we believe that the law is going to get across the line, there is still hope on two fronts. One, that we see automatic indexation. And on the second one is that we see a different means by which the earnings is calculated because on this unearned income we have this inequity around it, but there's also some very strange outcomes as a result that seem to be inconsistent with what we were going, you know, government was proposing in the first place. So hopefully we'll see something different. I believe the proposal is for application of the 90 day bank bill rate that would be used instead of this change in total super balance to to calculate earnings. I have to say that's probably more broadly reflective of earnings. They'll still be some winners and losers out of it, but it's probably more equitable than this change in title super balance calculation.
Robyn Jacobson
Essentially using a balance sheet approach instead of a profit and loss. So sort of looking at the actual earnings of the fund allocated to the members account and that could be spread across multiple accounts, of course, multiple super funds proposing to use this moment in the balance sheet amounts and then assuming that any movement is attributable to earnings. But you could have movements in balances due to recovery of previously lost market value. One of the ways I'm describing this is it's agnostic. It doesn't care. The movement between those two balances is due to a revenue gain or a capital gain or a discount gain or a non discount gain or a realised gain or an unrealised gain. It just says the movement with a couple of adjustments for benefits and also pension payments. And any contributions is taken to be this earnings figure.
Liz Westover
And you could have these very strange outcomes where let's just say someone has $20 million in super at the beginning of the year, they get $2 million in dividends, interest, rent, whatever it might be, but the value of the asset actually declines by $2 million. So at the end of the start, you have $20 million. At the end you have $20 million, you will pay no division 296 tax. And yet that fund has a $2 million in revenue. So that's really inconsistent, I think, with what we were trying to achieve through this. There's also some equity around the starting date. So if someone has an asset that has declined in value quite significantly and let's say that's what it's reported on the 1st of July, the 30th of June 25. So the starting value is quite low and that asset recovers in value. So by the end of the year and it recovered as my money just recovered, they're going to pay off 296 tax on that recovery amount. And that to me is not fair. It's not federal. And then we're looking at the impact on farmers. If it was lumpy assets, how are they going to fund these new tax liabilities? So whilst all this this income is supposedly in super, not everybody's going to be able to access super necessarily. You do have a choice about whether you pay these amounts early or you get a release authority from the tax office to pay it from the fund. But again, if you've got lumpy assets in low income, your cash flow may make it very, very difficult to be able to pay some of these tax liabilities. There's some big issues around it that I think you've really been thought through. I think it's been sort of pushing, I mean, being able to implement this policy, I can't like I say, policy, no one's got a problem with the implementation is what everyone has a problem with.
Robyn Jacobson
I agree it's the design. And you could have an interesting outcome where you pay your division 296 tax on, let's say, actual earnings. Then the fund makes a loss. And we've been advocating with the other joint bodies to be able to carry that loss back to recover the tax that you previously paid through a credit or an offset or something. And that's not being supported at this stage. So you can carry a loss forward. But what happens if you then die, for example, or there was a peak in the growth of that asset and it never recovers to that venue again, You will see these amounts of tax being paid on amounts that may never actually be realised.
Liz Westover
Correct. And if you are one of those people that sort of fluctuates above and below the $3 Million threshold, one year you're in one year out, how does that affect your losses and your ability to do it? It's very strange how that how that will actually work. And it could be these just these losses that are lost forever, you know, gone. You're never going to be able to recover on them just for people listening. That is the way it kind of works. If you think about it. Similarly to the way capital gains and losses works is that if you have a loss, you carry it forward to offset against future gain. So similarly here you carry for those losses to offset against future gains of future increases in your total super balance.
Robyn Jacobson
Though to let everyone know that we have been working very closely with the other professional associations across superannuation tax and accounting and we've put in submissions. We have been pushing for possible indexation of this $3 million cap. We've certainly expressed our concerns about the taxation of unrealised gains and also the fact that we can't carry these losses back. So they're the primary issues we've got with us and we wait to see what this does when it comes back before the rest of the Parliament.
Liz Westover
Yeah, I fear it's going to come through with very little change, but there is even still some very strange things in there. If you die before the 30th of June, you don't pay dip tune on six tax for that year. But if you die on the 30th of June, you do. It's going to be a drafting error but doesn't seem to have been fixed in that period when it actually was presented to Parliament to harmfully in the final version will at least get a change on that one to make sense.
Robyn Jacobson
We have said that's something that we did put in our submission to the Senate committee because that's completely anomalous that a single day in an income year would be treated differently from any other day in that year.
Liz Westover
Exactly.
Robyn Jacobson
All right. So moving on to the SG rate. We've seen it increase in recent years. It's currently sitting, of course, at 11%, what's going to happen to the rate next 1 July.
Liz Westover
So we're going up by another half a per cent from the 1st of July 24 and that'll be the second last one before we go to 12% from the 1st of July 2025. So we're nearly there in terms of getting to the 12%, The interesting thing is watching this interaction with maximum contributions base and whether that what indexation that amount will be. So we haven't seen the release of the new contributions by set for the current financial year, any high income earner is pretty much having SG that takes them to the concessional contributions cap. So for next year with the kept going up to $30,000 will be just watching to see what that maximum contributions base actually goes to as well. And if there's any opportunities there for people to top up and play contributions.
Robyn Jacobson
And for anyone concerned that it seems that the maximum contribution base is indexed faster than the concessional cap is indexed, the law does contain a built in mechanism and what this does is basically limit the maximum contribution base to the concessional cap if it actually ever reaches that point, which it may well in the next few years.
Liz Westover
That's exactly right. And that makes perfect sense for it to be that way, because you do not want employer contributions from one employer causing you to have a breach of the concessional contributions base. Yes, we've got some built in stopgaps there, thankfully.
Robyn Jacobson
Yes. And a reminder that when these particular rates keep going up, so 11 and a half and then up to 12 over the next year or so, that increases based on the payment is made, not when the work is done. So employers can get confused about which rate they should be applying to which salary, wage payments.
Liz Westover
It's complicated.
Robyn Jacobson
It is. All right. Payday, super. Look, there's so much we could say about this, but just in a few short minutes, what's happening with this? Certainly the Tax Institute and other bodies have been heavily involved in targeted consultation, and that does continue. And we do expect to see some draft legislation and a bill later this year. Plus, we're being told that there will be some further announcements in this year's budget. But what does this mean? What can we expect in the year or two ahead?
Liz Westover
Yeah, So I think there's still a lot to happen and there's a lot of productive consultation on that revenue. You're very heavily involved and a lot of the consultation that goes on, which makes sense, right? We want it to make sense, to be practical, to anticipate any of what would otherwise be unintended consequences of changes in legislation. But it does mean that there's a lot of systems and processes that need to be built before this is implemented. So I believe it's we need at least 12 months or a clear year to allow payroll providers and super and employers to get their systems up to scratch, to be able to to kind of deal with it. But at the end of it all, it just means that contributions into super will be made at the same time as the pay cycle for employees. Again, that makes sense. Like there've been a lot of sort of amounts going in for them and there'll be more reporting to make sure we can identify where those are not actually being paid. So I think it's fantastic legislation. As we know, the proof is in the pudding. So, you know, we'll have a look at the legislation when it finally comes through. But I do believe there's some really good people doing some really good things in this area to get the right outcomes.
Robyn Jacobson
And look, we do hope the right outcomes are achieved. It is a great opportunity to streamline the current penalty rules and also to overhaul the disproportionate penalty outcomes we see on employers. With someone who pays just one day late is treated exactly the same as that really egregious employer who never pays the super. And we would like to see a lot more proportionality coming in there.
Liz Westover
Absolutely. And I think it is that opportunity to rewrite the legislation. It's always been clunky. It was hard to work out. It was easy to get it wrong. So streamlining it and making it easier to understand and easier to comply with is going to avoid a lot of problems for employers in and of itself, not least of all the outcomes, is that people get the money to super faster with greater clarity and investment earnings faster. So that's a good outcome.
Robyn Jacobson
The two major things that of course need to be considered apart from all the technical interactions with other parts of the law, the cash flow impact on employers who do pay quarterly at the moment, they will notice, of course, a big change in the impact on their cash flow. And secondly, the timing of all this. It is a one July 26 start date at this stage. Now that sounds like a long way off, but there's an awful lot of work to do in the meantime. Plus, we have a federal election that, on my reckoning, would need to be held by May of next year at the latest. And then we know that the digital service providers, those designing the software, want an act of law in place for at least a year so they can invest and design the systems that are needed in order to implement the new regime. So it will be an interesting couple of years. There is a lot to achieve and it sounds like a long time, but it's actually going to be gobbled up pretty quickly.
Liz Westover
Agree. And I don't blame them for wanting legislation in place. When things can change so quickly, so rapidly for a developer I imagine that would be a big problem until you've got absolute certainty. But it's similar, you know, even with the division 296 where we're talking about it, we're raising it with clients and so on. But at the end of the day, just hold back on acting until we've got legislation. We know exactly what it's going to look like.
Robyn Jacobson
And just a completely different sphere. Liz, We've got the $20,000 instant asset write off threshold for small business entities for the current income year. That is one July 23 to 30, June 24. We're now sitting here in March and that bill is still before the Senate. Interestingly, court obviously measures not arm's length of income. So we talk about having certainty for taxpayers and yet we're what are we, eight months into this income year and we still haven't got certainty on that particular measure. Wow. Yeah, not ideal. So where do we go from here? You've got your event coming up. We know, of course, there's lots going on in this space. And I think something that is of interest that you might touch on in your session, that's the superannuation intensive, the amount of money sitting in super. Now of course continues to be published every quarter. But what are the current figures for the self-managed fund sector.
Liz Westover
We've cracked the non $913 billion in self-managed super funds, which means the SMSF sector itself is not far off cracking the trillion dollars. So it's it's amazing amount of money that is sitting in our sector and just shows the importance and the criticality of what we do as advisors for our clients to protect those monies and encourage, you know, good retirement savings outcomes. So amazing. And I think the number was the same 23 figures, 214,000 is some six or just over that number. So we continue to increase in number and assets under management and so on. So a very healthy sector, but the bigger it gets, the more critical it is for advisors to stay up to date and back to attending things like the Superannuation Intensive, just to make sure that you're getting the latest on some of these strategies and measures and changes in our legislation.
Robyn Jacobson
Liz, I get very excited about tax, but I think you get even more excited about superannuation.
Liz Westover
I do.
Robyn Jacobson
Thank you for your insights and I'm very interested to hear your session and your insights. That's your session at the superannuation tax intensive coming up in March.
Liz Westover
Thanks Robyn.
Robyn Jacobson
Thanks Liz. Thanks for listening to this episode of TaxVibe. I've been chatting with Liz Westover, fellow of The Tax Institute partner and national estimates leader with Deloitte. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to subscribe rate and review TaxVibe wherever you listen. We welcome any feedback and suggestions. To catch all the latest from TaxVibe and The Tax Institute. Join us on LinkedIn. If you're interested in being at the center of the tax conversation a membership at The Tax Institute could be just what you need. Stay current and connected with tangible real-world benefits. Learn more at taxinstitute.com.au. Thanks again. Until next time on TaxVibe