This thesis explores the economic issues associated with the payout phase where a defined contribution (DC) retirement arrangement is adopted. In particular, the role of annuities in providing a retirement income is examined as well as insurance they provide against retirement risks such as inflation, longevity and rate of return volatility. A comprehensive money’s worth calculation based on a Australian population cohort mortality table shows that overall, Australian nominal and inflation indexed life annuities provide relatively good value for money. Although relative to annuities sold in the US and the UK they do suffer from relatively high adverse selection costs, which could in turn reduce demand. In addition, the presence of a government provided safety net pension could also result in low demand for annuities. These two issues suggest that government intervention may be warranted to ensure retirees have access to affordable private insurance to protect their retirement benefit. This could take the form of mandating an annuity purchase at retirement. However, which annuity should be mandated is not well understood. This is an important question as there are many alternative annuity designs, each providing different degrees of retirement risk protection to an individual. This thesis uses numerical simulations to empirically analyse the costs and benefits of mandating alternative annuities from both an individual and government’s perspectives to determine optimal annuity design. A model is used to estimate the value of payouts over time from various types of annuities across a range of retirement benefits. A means tested safety net pension is assumed to exist. Two stochastic variables — inflation and the risky rate of return, are simultaneously used to show how the annuity payouts react to theses changes, highlighting the insurance features of various annuities. Consumer preferences for the various annuities are estimated based on tolerance to risk. The variable annuity dominates the utility rankings under two conditions: -- when the relative risk aversion is low and a safety net payment isn’t available, and when the relative risk aversion is high and a safety net payment is made. Otherwise the CPI indexed annuity has the highest ranking. Sensitivity analysis shows that the results presented here are robust to a number of alternative assumptions about the key variables.

The Australian tax policy of assessing trusts and their beneficiaries has been buffeted by changes that have occurred over the last 10 years or so, chiefly in the rules that equity has adopted and applied in its restatement of the rights and interests that a beneficiary has in a trust. Broadly, the scheme of div 6 of Part III of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 ?? the general provisions for assessing trustees and beneficiaries ?? has remained largely unaltered, its machinery has now become ill-suited to equity??s new jurisprudence concerning beneficiaries' interests in trusts. This thesis examines the rules that seek to identify in a beneficiary an interest that she or he has in a trust??s subject matter, and it questions whether the tax legislation is still adequate to work its policies in the light of changes in the rules of equity. Most pressing amongst them is the concept of present entitlement to income as a criterion for assessing beneficiaries of trusts on incomes derived by their trustees ?? at least before the income is physically paid or dealt with by the trustees so that there is some actual or constructive receipt by the beneficiary of that income. In addition to this, the thesis points to other difficulties that have arisen ?? largely because of changing jurisprudence ?? that portend the unworkability of the current tax policy. The proposition is that the only way to correct the present and forthcoming problems, and the tensions they will cause in the Australian tax system, is to abandon the conventional policy of seeking primarily to assess a beneficiary on a mere present entitlement, and instead to assess tax on physical distributions. Under this proposition, a beneficiary will no longer be assessed on anticipated distributions: she or he will now be assessed only on those distributions that are actually made thereto. Naturally enough, a number of other trust assessing issues are affected by the proposal, and the changes to them ?? largely in a way that makes them simpler ?? are proposed and submitted.

Bibliography: leaves 231-249. / xi, 249 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Economics, 1998?

x, 213 leaves ; 26 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Economics, 1974

No description available.

No description available.

The Australian tax policy of assessing trusts and their beneficiaries has been buffeted by changes that have occurred over the last 10 years or so, chiefly in the rules that equity has adopted and applied in its restatement of the rights and interests that a beneficiary has in a trust. Broadly, the scheme of div 6 of Part III of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 ?? the general provisions for assessing trustees and beneficiaries ?? has remained largely unaltered, its machinery has now become ill-suited to equity??s new jurisprudence concerning beneficiaries' interests in trusts. This thesis examines the rules that seek to identify in a beneficiary an interest that she or he has in a trust??s subject matter, and it questions whether the tax legislation is still adequate to work its policies in the light of changes in the rules of equity. Most pressing amongst them is the concept of present entitlement to income as a criterion for assessing beneficiaries of trusts on incomes derived by their trustees ?? at least before the income is physically paid or dealt with by the trustees so that there is some actual or constructive receipt by the beneficiary of that income. In addition to this, the thesis points to other difficulties that have arisen ?? largely because of changing jurisprudence ?? that portend the unworkability of the current tax policy. The proposition is that the only way to correct the present and forthcoming problems, and the tensions they will cause in the Australian tax system, is to abandon the conventional policy of seeking primarily to assess a beneficiary on a mere present entitlement, and instead to assess tax on physical distributions. Under this proposition, a beneficiary will no longer be assessed on anticipated distributions: she or he will now be assessed only on those distributions that are actually made thereto. Naturally enough, a number of other trust assessing issues are affected by the proposal, and the changes to them ?? largely in a way that makes them simpler ?? are proposed and submitted.

Between July 2000 and July 2016 around 3.5 million Australian citizens and residents will reach a minimum age pension age with, on average, considerable remaining life expectancy. Contemporary policy settings would lead this demographic group to expect to enter and remain within an environment of near universal access to an age or similar pension program. This is mainly because Australian public retirement transfers are non-contributory, means tested, marital status differentiated and indexed to inflation and male wages. They are also available to age qualified residents irrespective of home ownership. These factors mean that discretionary private retirement income is both encouraged and discouraged by tax and means test treatments. Private retirement income above various annually reset thresholds would cause a gradual withdrawal of public transfers, progressively greater income tax and a Medicare levy. Thus saving choices can alter the relative income of pensioners at the cost of working age income and retirement age taxes and transfers. Australian social policy creates various interesting intertemporal income trade offs for individuals between private retirement income provision and pre-retirement saving. This thesis quantifies the trade off for single and married males and females who earn previous or projected average incomes prior to their minimum applicable age pension ages from July 2000 to July 2016. It does this by recreating and projecting the post age 45 saving efforts needed to produce three alternate retirement income profiles for outright homeowners. The first income profile is that of the Age Pension maximiser who retains no retirement savings. The second is the income profile of the ‘theoretic’ pension maximiser who saves sufficient to utilise the means test ‘free area’ of income available to pensioners. Third is the income profile for individuals who seek to annuitise their income to create a combined publicly and privately funded income stream that remains above the Age Pension income means test exclusion points for an average remaining life expectancy. Continuation of late 20th century pension maximisation and limited saving into the first half of the 21st century seem an inevitable consequence of present and foreseeable retirement income policies for the selected demographic group. However, this thesis explores a more optimal social policy outcome of significantly greater financial independence from the tax transfer system. This is in an environment where the compulsory superannuation system will produce an insufficient supplement to the Age Pension system for the researched demographic group. Consequently, this thesis explores the capacity for average income earners to produce a comparatively high income during a standard retirement.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2007. / Prepared for: School of Social Work. Bibliography: leaves 178-202. Also available online via the Internet.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: David Stevens.