Q&A: Is my account based pension counted as income or asset?
Hi, it’s Greg from Retirement Essentials, your helping hand when applying for the age pension. An account based pension is also known an as ‘allocated’ pension and it’s a regular income stream drawn from the money you’ve accumulated in your super. The account balance of your pension is subject to the assets test, but the income is deemed – that means it doesn’t matter what actual income you receive from your account based pension, because Centrelink use a set of rules and assume a level of income from your financial assets. You can see the current assume rates of income here. Please leave all questions in the “Comments” section.
“The account balance of your pension is subject to the assets test”.
How do I work out the “account balance” of my DFRDB pension?
My partner is applying for a pension. I am on long service leave and supplement this income with a transition to retirement payment from my SMSF. Is that payment included in the calculation of my yearly income? Does it bring my SMSF balance into relevancy for calculating my assests?
Thankyou
J Young
Hi Jennifer, thanks for reaching out! Centrelink will assess the amount your are being paid from leave as income but the transition to retirement (TTR) account will primarily be classed as an asset and assessed based on the total balance in the account. There will be some income that your TTR and other financial assets are deemed to earn (to learn more about deeming, CLICK HERE) which will be added to your employment income.
It looks like you have an account set up with us already so I recommend you LOGIN and then click on the Eligibility Calculator in the left hand side menu so you can input simple, high level figures for your leave income, TTR and other income/assets to see if your partner is still eligible or not.
Hi Greg
I got a letter from centrelink asking for SA330
but as per my accountant all my supper is accumulation phase ,and no need to fill up SA330.because there is no income stream product.
what should i do centerlink ask 3 time again and again.
1 have 8320.00 in pension account 1, and 111286.58 in pension account 2 , and 34851.99 in pension account 3 and the rest in accumulation Phase.
please advise
Hi Jagdish, Thank you for your comment! It sounds like you/your accountant may be misunderstanding something. If all of the money in your SMSF is still in accumulation phase then you wouldn’t have “pension account” 1, 2 and 3. Those accounts are almost certainly income streams and do require either a Centrelink schedule or the completion of the SA330 as advised by Centrelink. If you do complete the SA330s then you will also need to provide the member statement for each of those three pension accounts.