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James Coyle
James has over 35 years experience in financial services with particular expertise in two of the key components of retirement finance - Superannuation and the Age Pension. He is passionate about providing the guidance and support that can help older Australians enjoy their best possible retirement. He lives in regional Victoria surrounded by dogs and chooks.
After completing the age pension entitlement test from your website which suggested that i /we are entitled to part of the age pension. I visited Centrelink . I was told that if you have assets of $900k you are not entitled .I think you should state this in the information you provided it will save us a lot of time .
Note these assets are savings ,super ,cars ,furniture any other property even if it is not providing an income , and indeed if one does not receive any income that is taxable .Also if you have a partner that has nothing and you have something you are expected to support her/him .I would be interested to read a response from you
Hi Monica, thank you for raising your concern. I searched your email address and found that we did advise you would be eligible for a pension on 2 separate occasions (23/03/22 and 27/04/22) however I think you may have made an honest mistake made when you were completing the calculator as the total value of the assets you listed was only $1,400 and $1,200 respectively. We emailed you a copy of the eligibility report on both occasions which included the data entered and also the applicable income/asset thresholds you needed to be under to be eligible.
Thank you for this very informative email. Much appreciated.
It is not immediately clear in any of the information provided on DSS and Centrelink websites that the interest earnings on the money in my superannuation account would be counted as earnings against the $190 per fortnight allowable earnings. I couldn’t work out why the small lump sums I receive from contract work were reducing my fortnightly payments so much. It is also now clear that the Work Bank credit if accrued as an ‘entitlement’ at $300 per fortnight per annum. The allowance is not available up-front as a whole allowed
amount. Even the Centrelink Officers said the information on the websites is not explicit enough. When an appointment was made with a Centrelink Financial Advisor they explained this in everyday language and the ‘pennies dropped” so to speak. Armed with this knowledge I now know that most people would not be able to “earn” from work $190 per fortnight (single) without a pension reduction. As the $190 allowance us already eaten up by the calculated franked super interest income.
I have a 90 year old neighbour, who has received a request for information from Centrelink regards occasional rent paid to him by his eldederly son.
As He is currently in isolation due to COVID. I offered to help.
I was able to establish that he does not have access to My Gov, so on his behalf I Posted his Letter of explanation to the local Centrelink service centre using the address on the Centrelink web site.
Will this help or have I complicated things
Hi John, thanks for reaching out and good on you for helping your elderly neighbour! It is hard to know if the letter you sent will be sufficient or not. If it is only a small amount of rent that is received and it is inconsistent then a written/verbal response can be accepted however given it is coming from yourself and not the customer, Centrelink may dig their heels in and say that they need something from him. Also posting documents to Centrelink is something Retirement Essentials has had limited success with and we proactively avoid it, ordinarily we’d recommend attending in person to speak with someone and physically hand over any letters/documents. So you certainly haven’t made things any worse and I commend you for trying to help however it is up to Centrelink’s discretion.