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Our Perth-based team of cryptocurrency accountants can assist you with the setup of an SMSF for the purposes of investing into bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Thereafter, we can assist with ongoing annual compliance obligations such as annual tax return.
Please note, our involvement is strictly limited to accounting solutions. We do not provide financial/investment advice.
Generally, it is possible for Australians to do the following with their superannuation within a self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF):
The Superannuation Laws require that you maintain the SMSF for the sole purpose of providing retirement benefits to members (i.e. “The Sole Purpose Test”). It’s very important that personally owned cryptocurrency and SMSF crypto are held separately, with accurate ownership records and complete transactions history.
Further, SMSFs are generally restricted from borrowings and you need to be careful not to expose the SMSF’s cryptocurrency to adverse liabilities. Accordingly, you need to be very careful with cryptocurrency margin and lending in a SMSF.
video key points
IMPORTANT NOTE: To be eligible to make catch-up contributions, your total superannuation balance at the prior 30 June must be below $500,000. (Last updated: 20/05/2021)
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
Disclaimer: Please be aware that this video was recorded in 2021 and changes to the tax system since then mean that some of the information may be out-of-date. The information presented is general in nature and is not tax or financial advice. You may need to seek professional advice applicable to your circumstances from an appropriately licenced professional.
video transcript
On Superannuation.
(And) So, when we’re talking about Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF), as you see there towards the bottom of that side, there’s tax free super earnings in retirement phase.
So, what I mean here is that when in super you are earning income, profits, gains and that superannuation is paying out a retirement stream to you.
So you’ve (you’ve) got to your older age and you’re starting to draw down super, that super, the earnings on that can be tax free.
They won’t necessarily have to pay any tax. You might have to pay 10 or 15 percent tax, but it could be tax free. Depends on, obviously, the super laws at that time when you’re taking them out.
But in this current climate, if you’ve got less than $1.6 million, and that’s been put into support that retirement stream, you’re basically looking at whatever earnings are in there, completely tax free.
That means, you might be lucky enough, you might own some crypto in there and it might go from $100,000, it might go to $10 million, that growth, in the right conditions, completely tax free.
So incredibly great environment to have.
So the big downside of superannuation, structuring it that way, would be your access to super monies. If you’re not anywhere near retirement age, you can’t touch the, can’t touch and use those profits for your personal use until we get to retirement.
So that’s a disincentive to put the money in there, if you wanted to use the gains for something else before you hit retirement.
But if you’re looking to invest in cryptocurrency and you think they’re gonna help part of your longer term retirement planning, superannuation can be very attractive because of those lower tax rates.
I know we’re also talking about super. We’re also talking about contributions and their ability to reduce our personal taxable income, and therefore some tax rate.
So what you can do is you can contribute monies to superannuation to get a tax deduction for it.
Why would you do that? Because that can reduce your overall tax rate.
So contributing to super, a contribution that goes into super that is deductible to you, would be ordinarily taxed at 15% in the super.
If you’re a high income earner, say, earning over $200,000, I think the limit is at $250,000 I can’t quite recall at this time, somewhere within $200,000 or $250,000. If you’re earning over that amount that contribution actually might be effectively taxed at 30%, but still there is benefit.
The benefit would be that the amount that you contribute there, that’s within certain thresholds. So, there’s certain thresholds that you can do. So, you can’t just contribute as much as you want into super. So, you’d be (have to be) very mindful of the contribution caps. But the amount you contribute goes as a tax deduction, in your tax return. So if you’re going to pay 39 cents for each dollar profit, 49 cents in each dollar profit. Now each dollar that you put into super is saving you the difference between your tax rate and the super tax rate.
So if your tax rate was 47 cents on the dollar and going into super you only paying 15 cents, you’re basically saving 32 cents on the dollar each (each) dollar contributed to super.
If your tax rate was 30 percent going into super, you’d save 17 cents.
If your tax rate was 39 cents on the dollar and whatever reason your super was, contribution was being taxed at 30%, you’re still saving 9 cents on the dollar.
So you are saving, making those contributions.
But it’s really important, there are contribution caps going in, into super, and that some of those caps might have already been soaked up.
Used up by say employer, your employer make contributions on your behalf. So you might only have a small amount available.
But this, at this time, we now have availability of catch up contributions.
If in previous tax years, you didn’t fully utilise your cap, those unused amounts can flow over. I believe the rule is up to five years, starting about three years ago (2019FY). They can add on top and then all of a sudden, instead of that year’s cap you might have had $10,000 available, if you had $10,000 available that you didn’t use up for the last three years, the actual total cap you can use is now $40,000. So, you can make a slightly larger contribution.
You might want to, you might want to consider using that to get that tax savings.
There is also another strategy to give a little bump up, to that you can contribute as well. It’s called a “Reserving Strategy”.
It’s very unique, a very complex one, you want to get (definitely get) advice and assistance with this. But essentially it allows you to use next year’s contribution. That amount you’re not going to use next year to bring it into this year.
You would need a Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF) to do this and you’ve got to be very careful around how much you’re going to use in this reserving strategy, because if you’re making a contribution now and then next year you made more than you otherwise were planning to, and you might breach the cap next year, which could have some serious implications.
So, when it comes to all this, wrapping it all up, and we’re talking about Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF).
Look, highly regulated. A lot of onus is on you to abide by the super laws and tax laws, there.
These funds are audited. So essentially your accounting costs go up quite substantially. You’ve got audit costs involved.
So ordinarily, the rule of thumb is, or at the very least $200,000 in super to make them cost effective. This day and age, you even hear of A.S.I.C. talking about higher amount.
Yes, you can set them up if you have a lower (lower) amount in super. But, you’ve got to look at that cost and benefit analysis.
And, I really do suggest that you seek out professional help with setting these up, or at least considering setting these up, and if you’d like to explore that Munro’s can consistent with that process.
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