Introduction

With Australia’s age pension being subject to an assets and income test, a simple way for part-pensioners to increase their pension payments is to give away some assets.

Not surprisingly the government is on to such an obvious strategy. It’s called gifting, and while it is perfectly legal for you to give away whatever you want whenever you want, if you exceed the relevant limits, Centrelink will continue to assess, what it calls “deprived assets”, for five years.

The limits... 

Introduction

Currently 1.... million Australian homeowners receive some level of age pension, with around ..00,000 on a part pension.

What many of these part-age pensioners may not know is that, along with recipients of the disability support pension, carer payment and some other Centrelink payments, they are able to access some of the equity in their home through the Pension Loan Scheme (PLS).

What is the PLS?

Introduction

The basic rule for receiving an age or service pension is to ensure it goes to those people who need it. To determine how much each person is paid, pension recipients are subject to means testing on income and assets.

Two tests are applied and the one paying the lowest age pension is the one that is used. Many retirees pass the income test but fail the tougher assets test. This means they get a reduced pension or no pension at all.

Introduction

If it’s crossed your mind to look at ways to reduce the value of your total assets to be eligible to receive an age pension benefit, you should be very careful. There are strict rules governing what you can give away and when.

Introduction

With all of the talk about the need to be self-sufficient in retirement it’s not surprising that many people assume that the government-funded age pension will be phased out altogether sometime in the future. But will it?