Over the last week I have had 3 adviser queries relating to the impending sale of SMSF assets with significant capital gains. Each fund was similar in that they comprised a member in pension mode and another in accumulation who could now, or in a month or so, commence a standard account based pension with their total balance.

An SMSF can be a fully segregated pension fund for only part of the year – i.e. an actuarial certificate is only required for that part of the year in which both a pension account and an accumulation account exist in the fund – so provided that all member accounts are in pension mode when the asset is sold, the proceeds of that sale will be tax exempt.

A little planning can save a lot of tax.