Report of Senate Select Committee on Superannuation and Standards of Living in Retirement: Analysis and Review

This paper examines and assesses the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Superannuation and Standards of Living in Retirement of an inquiry into “the adequacy of the tax arrangements for superannuation ad related policy to address the retirement income and aged and health care needs of Australians”. Two criteria are used in the assessment. First, do the proposed measures address effectively the key issues of concern? Second, do the measures find strong support from economic principles, in particular those relating to tax reform? The main conclusion reached is that the recommendations, including the central proposal for removal of multi-stage taxation on superannuation will address only partially the problem of a projected adequacy gap and other weaknesses of Australia’s retirement income system. While the proposed measures generally meet the first three tax criteria, a major shortcoming is the absence of estimates of their short and long-run fiscal impact.