In General,
Superannuation offers good number of benefits to the employees. Also, this scheme helps in living trouble free life even after retirement.
These benefits are categorized into three basic parts namely - • Preserved benefits - These are those benefits that must be preserves in a superannuation fund until the employee’s ‘preservation age’. Currently, all workers must wait until they are 55 before they may access these funds. All contributions made after July 1, 1999 fall into this category. Restricted non-preserved benefits cannot be accessed until an employee meets a condition of release, such as terminating their employment in an employer superannuation scheme. Unrestricted non-preserved benefits are benefits that can be accessed upon the request of the worker.
• Reasonable Benefit Limits - From 1st July 2007 the Reasonable Benefit Limits have been discarded. The new policy has been simplified according to the new budget (2009 to 2010) on age pension of Australia. Reasonable benefit limits (RBL) are the highest amount of retirement and termination of employment benefits that a person can receive in their lifetime at reasonable tax rates. Once the person starts receiving the benefit, the payer must report the contribution to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The RBL is than decided by the ATO whether the person has exceeded or not and notifies them if they have. There are huge numbers of factors that can affect a person’s RBL, complicating the calculation involved.
• Preservation age - Eligibility for access to preserved benefits depends on a worker’s preservation age. The Howard government announced changes in 1997 to the
Australian superannuation system designed to encourage Australians to stay in the workforce for a longer period of time, delaying the effect of population ageing. After the legislation was passed in 1999, an employee’s preservation age depends on their date of birth.