ATO promises no more SMSF reporting changes
Assistant commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO’s) self-managed super fund (SMSF) segment, Kasey Macfarlane has reassured delegates at the SMSF Association Conference that the ATO has “no intention to introduce any further reporting requirements for SMSFs.”
She did, however, say that SMSF advisers and clients would benefit from regular reports. By monitoring what was happening between reporting deadlines, advisers could ensure that they were making the best decisions for their clients.
Macfarlane said doing so would also allow advisers to provide greater assurances for SMSFs in terms of certainty and compliance.
She emphasised that this was particularly pertinent to clients who only had yearly reporting requirements.
Regular reporting would also help the ATO ensure that employers are complying with their superannuation obligations. Macfarlane said that SMSFs reporting would allow the ATO to assess payments across all funds, meaning it would be easier to identify when employers were not paying the full superannuation guarantee.
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-regulated funds already use the ATO’s reporting systems. The session moderator, SMSF Association head of education and technical Peter Hogan, suggested that this could mean that the reporting system would already be working well by the time SMSFs would need to use it on 1 July, 2018.
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