Reserve tipped to bump up rates

Homeowners face finding another $50 a month to pay the mortgage, with the Reserve Bank tipped to lift official interest rates again today as it battles to dampen house prices and keep inflation pressures at bay.

A quarter percentage point rise this afternoon would mean official rates would have climbed 1.25 percentage points since October, adding more than $240 to the monthly repayments on a $300,000 mortgage.

It would be the biggest run of increases in a 12-month period since the Reserve took the official cash rate from 5 per cent to 6.25 per cent between November 1999 and August 2000.

But the decision could be a close call, with signs of softness in the retail and building sectors lifting expectations the Reserve may wait at least another month before moving in the week before Treasurer Wayne Swan hands down the Federal Budget.

At least mortgage holders may be saved from a “super-sized” lift to their repayments, with the NAB yesterday saying it would not increase its rates more than any move in the official cash rate. Its recent policy of matching rate rises had led to more customers.

That prompted Mr Swan to challenge other major banks to follow NAB’s lead.

TD Securities senior strategist Annette Beacher expects the Reserve board to hold rates today.

But Macquarie Bank rate strategist Rory Robertson said the chance of a rate rise was about 80 per cent.

“Interest rates here remain unusually low, our jobs market is strengthening, China and bulk-commodity prices are booming, so, too, local home prices, and the world’s biggest economy increasingly is getting back on its feet,” he said.

A new survey from Dun and Bradstreet of business executives out today shows sales, growth, employment and capital investment expectations all rising. 

Source  :  www.thewest.com.au

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See through the rebate debate health insurance

The strategy :  To work out how the changes to the health insurance rebate affect me.

I suppose it means I’ll be paying more for my health insurance. That’s the gist of it though it will depend on whether Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull delivers on his threat to block the legislation. As you may have picked up from the federal budget, the Government needs to find savings to fund higher pension payments.

One proposed measure is means testing the health insurance rebate, which currently allows you to claim a tax rebate of 30 per cent of the cost of your health insurance if you’re aged under 65, 35per cent if you’re 65 to 69 and 40 per cent if you’re 70 or older.

Most people ask their health fund to reduce their premiums to take account of the rebate rather than paying the full premium and claiming the rebate in their tax return. For someone under 65, a monthly insurance premium of $250 could be reduced to $175. That won’t change if you earn up to $75,000 if you’re single and $150,000 for families. But if your income is higher, your rebate will be reduced or cut out altogether.

How will that work? Let’s look at singles first. If you earn $75,001-$90,000, your rebate will be reduced to 20 per cent. If you earn $90,001-$120,000, the new rebate will be 10 per cent.

Once your income exceeds $120,000 you will be ineligible for the rebate.

For families, the combined income limits are $150,001-$180,000 for the 20per cent rebate, $180,001-$240,000 for the 10 per cent rebate and the rebate will disappear altogether once family income exceeds $240,000.

All income thresholds will be indexed to wages and will be adjusted for families with one child in the same way that thresholds are already adjusted for determining whether you have to pay the Medicare levy surcharge if you don’t have private health cover. The threshold is currently lifted by $1500 for each dependent child.

The Government says the definition of your income for the rebate will be the same as for the Medicare levy surcharge. Challenger’s head of technical services, Alex Denham, says this definition is changing from July 1 to include your taxable income, reportable fringe benefits, salary sacrificed to super or any personal deductible super contributions made and net investment losses. So higher-income earners won’t be able to use strategies such as salary sacrifice to get or increase their rebate.

Would I be better off dropping my health insurance and paying the Medicare levy surcharge? The proposed measures also include a rise in this surcharge precisely to stop this sort of behaviour.

The 1 per cent surcharge will rise to 1.25per cent once income exceeds $90,000 for singles or $180,000 for couples and to 1.5 per cent for incomes exceeding $120,000 or $240,000. That extra tax may cancel out any savings from dropping your health cover.

MLC’s head of technical services, Andrew Lawless, says a better option may be to make changes to your policy, such as increasing the excess you pay before claiming on the cover or reducing cover on ancillary benefits. However, to avoid the surcharge you must have hospital cover with an excess of $500 or less for singles or $1000 or less for families or couples per calendar year.

When will the changes come in? Not until July 1 next year, so you have time to check the final details if the measures are passed and weigh up your options.

It’s worth noting that the Medicare levy surcharge income limits will be indexed from their current levels of $70,000 for singles and $140,000 for couples to the new $75,000 and $150,000 levels at this time.

Source : www.watoday.com.au

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Australian share market opens higher

THE share market has opened marginally stronger the morning after the federal budget was handed down, and following a mixed lead from Wall Street.
At 10.15am (AEST), the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was up 12.1 points, or 0.31 per cent, at 3889.3, while the broader All Ordinaries gained 8.7 points, or 0.23 per cent, to 3872.3.

The four major banks were mostly higher at the open.

ANZ gained 4cents to $16.01, NAB was up 14 cents at $22.00 and Westpac was up 10 cents at $20.48.

The Commonwealth Bank, which reported cash earnings for the March quarter of about $1.15 billion, generating a cash return on equity of over 15 per cent, was down 20 cents at $36.40.

Resources weren’t as lucky, opening lower in morning trade.

Mining giant BHP was down five cents at $34.26, while rival Rio Tinto lost 4.41 per cent to $65.46.

Wall Street wobbled to a mixed finish on Tuesday as investors paused to assess gains from a long rally and mulled the new efforts to raise capital by banks and other firms.

The markets also digested better-than-expected data on the US trade deficit and reassuring comments from Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, about the health of the banking system.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 50.34 points, or 0.60 per cent, to settle at 8,469.11.
The tech-dominated Nasdaq dropped 15.32 points, or 0.88 per cent, to 1715.92 while the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 0.89 point, or 0.1 per cent, to settle at 908.35.

On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price index contract was trading 17 points higher at 3885 on volume of 4900 contracts.
www.news.com.au

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Australia Budget

With the increasing interest in Britons looking to migrate to Australia, the  
health of the economy down under is an important topic.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will deliver his 2nd Federal Budget on the 12th
May and he is expected to spend big in order to stimulate the Australian
econ0my that has slowed but not been devastated from the current Economic
Crisis.

In his first budget last year, PM Rudd promised to follow the previous
Howard Government’s prudent economic practise of positive budgets and had
forecast a A$21bn Surplus. Then along came the economic turmoil of 2008 and
PM Rudd went on a massive spending spree to keep the economy afloat and try
and avoid the first Australian recession in over 14 years.

So far this has seemed to work with only a 0.1% retraction in the Australian
economy in the December 2008 quarter, and we can expect to see some major
spending and incentive programs announced in this years’ budget aimed at
further invigorating the Australian economy and maintaining it as one of the
worlds safe havens.

This could be good news for Australian property investors and intended
migrants, that continue to enjoy favourable access to finance and prices
that have stayed firmer than many other countries, including the United
Kingdom, but have come off to offer true value in the current market.

SMATS Group Chairman, Steve Douglas, will be conducting his Annual
Australian Budget Review Seminar in London on the 9th & 10th June and it is
an opportunity for UK based Australians and English citizens with an
interest in Australia, to hear a full analysis of the Federal Budget and
discuss how it may impact on their personal situation.

This seminar is part of a world tour for Mr Douglas who presents this
seminar in Asia, Middle East and the Asia, Middle Eas tand USA as well. “This annual event has
proven popular as we endeavour to explain the complex issues announced in
the budget in simple English that anyone can understand and then discuss how
it may influence property and financial markets so people can use the
knowledge to their advantage.”

SMATS Group is the largest firm in the world assisting Australian Landlords
and Intended Migrants with their Australian Taxation & Finance requirements.

www.australiamagazine.co.uk

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