Steve Elliott retired as an accountant and IT professional seven years ago.

He now enjoys an idyllic lifestyle on Sydney's northern beaches thanks to his tax-free self-managed super fund.

"I've always been impressed about how much I didn't have to pay and what a lurk it was for me, and then I started to realise that the inequity was just very severe because I hadn't even looked at the top end of the spectrum, because I am nowhere near that," he told ABC TV's The Business.

Using his knowledge as a chartered accountant, Mr Elliott began to have that look at the top end and he was shocked by what he found.

"The word obscene springs to mind. I thought there was a gross inequity, but nothing like the scale I realised when I did the figures," he said.

Mr Elliott calculated the superannuation accrued over a 43-year working life and he added 20 years of payments in retirement.

For a very wealthy couple, who are able to make the maximum contributions from their first day at work, the tax saving is 40 per cent of their super balance and payments, or a staggering $65 million.

For a couple with a combined income of $100,000 it falls to 18 per cent. At $70,000, the tax saving is just 14 per cent.

"One of the extraordinary things about our superannuation system is that, particularly for high income earners, investing in superannuation is even better than investing in owner-occupied housing, which is the other thing we think of as a highly preferred tax vehicle," said John Daley, the chief executive of The Grattan Institute.

Mr Daley said Mr Elliott's tax calculations are plausible.

They support the Grattan Institute's own research, which shows that more than half the annual superannuation tax savings of around $30 billion goes to the wealthiest households.

"You've got more dollars, you are getting a larger tax break per dollar and so, not surprisingly, the superannuation tax breaks, when you look at the total number of dollars, overwhelmingly to to the top 20 per cent of taxpayers," he said.

Wealthy save hundreds of thousands in tax annually

A case in point is former BHP Billiton chairman, Don Argus, who last year settled a fight with the Tax Office over his self-managed superannuation fund.

At the time, the fund was reported to have a balance of around $15 million.

A pension of 6 per cent of that fund would be $900,000 a year, tax free.

Depending on the structure of the fund, that is a possible tax saving of up to $411,000, excluding the fund's earnings, which are also tax free.

However, not everyone is convinced the debate over superannuation tax breaks for the wealthy is the right debate.

The body which represents Australia's more than half-million self-managed super fund owners argues a much more important issue is a super system which takes as many people off the aged pension as possible.

"We know for instance last year that superannuation saved the Government about $9 billion on the aged pension, so our debate starts to change and we start to look at long term thinking," said Andrea Slattery, chief executive of the SMSF Professionals Association.

Which is why Ms Slattery believes the Government's talk of superannuation tax breaks and the budget deficit in the same breath is wrong.

"Budgets and annual budget cycles are looking at short-term fiscal issues: how do we help the budget? Superannuation should not be considered something that is actually a honeypot that is used to fill a deficit," she added.

Notwithstanding that view, if the Government got serious about ending super tax breaks for people who do not need them, various estimates show it could cut the budget deficit by $10-15 billion.