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Tuesday, 26 October 2021
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We'd like to thank our readers for the overwhelmingly positive and encouraging comments we received in our Reader Survey last month. We summarise the results and provide links to all the answers and comments.
The use of leverage within SMSFs has come under heavy scrutiny lately with strong arguments for and against. Some forms of 'protected' gearing can help manage risk, demonstrating that not all gearing is the same.
If you want to make the most of the recently increased superannuation personal contribution limits, here is a timely explanation of how to use the 'bring forward' rule to your advantage.
Over the last two years, small caps have underperformed their large cap rivals in Australia, which goes against the global historical trend. Where has our small cap additional performance gone and will it return?
When investing capital, you expect the return to adequately compensate you for the likelihood of loss. Understanding both risk and reward is vital, so the more you know about 'knowns' and 'unknowns' the better.
Thomas Piketty’s 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' stunned the publishing world when it reached number one on the Amazon best seller list. What lessons for today can we learn from Dickens, Austen and Balzac?
Home office or operate a business from home? See new ATO video on deductions.
The RBA Governor says rising house prices are due to "the design of our taxation and social security systems". The OECD says "the prolonged boom in house prices has inflated the wealth of many pensioners without impacting their pension eligibility." What's your view?
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.