With the age of user-pays legislation we are no longer guaranteed a retirement paid for by those behind us. The pressures which the current generation of baby boomers will place on the superannuation regime and the tax take will be enormous. Not only will the most intelligent, affluent, highly motivated, influential and populous demographic group in the history of the world retire but they will also likely be pursued for redress from those behind. The number of tax payers to retirees is, at the time of writing this article in 2006 4 taxpayers to 1 superannuitant. In 2015 when the last of the boomers retire the ratio will be less than 2 taxpayers to 1 superannuitant.
The answer to the government of the days woes in balancing the books is likely to be to tax the boomers in their retirement. Some sort of wealth tax is almost inevitable given that the boomers will have by and large reduced their incomes to those able to be achieved from their static investments.
To ensure that we are not caught in a position where we are more heavily taxed as a result of what we own it is vital that we get our assets out of our individual ownership. The way to do that and to still maintain control is of course to form a trust.
A trust is only one mechanism which can be used to estate plan so that income is maximized and exposure to tax is minimized. It is vital that whatever is done it is done as soon as possible.
At Citylaw we administer almost 500 trusts. We pride ourselves once again on being able to call ourselves specialists in the estate planning area. We are ready and willing to assist our clients and their referrals in giving advice, tailor-making a plan and assisting with the implementation of that plan.
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