The Transition to Retirement Provisions : A Critical Analysis and a Consideration of Policy Alternatives

The Transition to Retirement (TTR) provisions allow workers who have reached preservation age to access their superannuation despite not ceasing employment. Full-time mature workers commonly use these provisions for tax minimisation purposes. Such use is inconsistent with their original aim of enabling mature workers to transition to retirement by lightening their workload while accessing their superannuation to top up their reduced income. Furthermore, despite claims that the ability of full-time workers to use the TTR provisions helps to achieve certain policy goals, a number of alternative policies considered in this paper are better suited to fulfilling such goals