The generosity of the tax expenditures on superannuation, and the limited controls on contributions, greatly magnify the negative effects of a superannuation system on gender inequality, according to the Curtin University based, Women in Social and Economic Research group (WiSER).
The group has used a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Economic Security of Women in Retirement to argue that the superannuation system, as it currently stands, is skewed towards men and those who are well off.
“The groups most able to benefit from the tax expenditures on superannuation are high income earners and those with flexible assets that can be moved into the tax-advantaged superannuation system,” the submission said.
“Because women are underrepresented in these groups, they receive a relatively small share of the benefits of the increasingly large tax expenditures on superannuation.”
The WiSER submission said that its overall evaluation of Australian policy on retirement savings and income on the criteria of gender equity was “negative”.
“The shift in focus toward superannuation, and especially the large tax expenditures on superannuation, has exacerbated rather than reduced gender inequality,” it claimed adding that, “generally, the policy settings are also contributing to higher levels of inequality in the incomes of older Australians”.
“Under the current policy settings some retirees, and statistically more men than women, who have accumulated significant assets in superannuation will access large tax-free incomes in retirement and derive the benefits for health and care that this provides,” the submission said.
“Others, and more commonly women than men, will continue to depend on the age pension, which will deliver them an increasingly frugal existence.”
The submission said that, fundamentally there was a need to balance the resourcing of superannuation tax concessions and the age pension.
“This will require a substantial winding back of the tax concessions available for superannuation,” it said.
Don’t you think that the system is skewed towards people who are in paid work, rather than being skewed against a particular gender?