Super tax favours high-income earning males

Any measures aimed at improving super savings for women have been swallowed up by the absurdly harsh asset test paper, according to Industry Super Australia (ISA).

Welcoming the Green's call for a Senate review of the retirement savings gap for women, ISA said its submission to the tax review found the current tax settings fail to deliver a comfortable retirement for women.

ISA deputy chief executive, Robbie Campo, said even with a fully mature super system 63 per cent of single women could not retire comfortably by 2055 unless something was done now to rebalance the retirement income system.

Agreeing, the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) chief executive. Tom Garcia, said the current superannuation tax system is stacked in favour of high income earning, well-off males.

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AIST and Women in Super (WIS) have urged the government to prioritise the super tax reform to improve outcomes for women as the heavy weighting of tax concessions to high-income earners is a key factor behind the gender gap in retirement income.

WIS chair, Cate Wood, said it was ironic that the only super tax change supported by the Government was to increase the tax paid by low income earners by withdrawing the Low Income Super Contribution (LISC).

"Women have longer life expectancies and so need more savings to last longer. Greater equity in super taxation concessions and special measures are required to compensate for women's diminished savings opportunities due to their workforce experience," Wood said.

"Despite more than 20 years of compulsory super, we're still seeing women retiring with just over half the savings of men. There is no silver bullet; this is a complex and multi-layered problem which needs a collaborative, bipartisan effort to address it."

According to ISA, the current 19 per cent pay gap between women and men's wages translates into a super gap of 47 per cent.

Research from the AIST-Mercer Super Tracker rates the current gender gap at 6.26, a score of 10 means there is no gender gap.