ATO tax rejig to hit fund managers and super funds

Fund managers and superannuation funds will be required to make changes in the reporting of taxation that will be comparable in scope with those made for SuperStream under proposals released by the Australian Tax Office (ATO).

The ATO has announced a self-assurance program in which large corporates, including funds management groups and superannuation funds, will need to implement more robust taxation reporting systems including moving away from a reliance on spreadsheets and adhoc reporting systems.

CCH commercial director Tony Katsigarakis said the shift would apply to corporates with an annual turnover of more than $100 million and while the ATO was not prescribing what tools should be used for tax reporting it had released information about the required attributes of tax reporting systems.

"The program announced by the ATO recognises the risk carried by using spreadsheets and ad-hoc systems to track and report taxation. The intention is to move to a world where there are more robust systems in place and allows corporates to move to a self-assurance model," Katsigarakis said.

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He stated this would be a dramatic change for financial services providers who typically have greater levels of complexity than other corporates as they are required to capture and report all transactions, including capital gains and goods and services taxes.

"Financial services providers have multiple systems dealing with transaction data and the challenge will be to compile that data in a way that meets the ATO requirements. It will be comparable with the shift in data reporting that was required by APRA regulated funds under SuperStream," Katsigarakis said.