BGL is investing in tools to help clients understand and explain how Div 296 may apply, without treating outcomes as definitive or replacing professional judgement.
Jeevan Tokhi, BGL chief product officer, told SMSF Adviser the biggest challenge in this process is building planning tools around proposed legislation that hasn’t yet been finalised.
“Div 296 introduces complex concepts, including fund-level earnings that differ from taxable income, mandatory proportional attribution for SMSFs, and transitional CGT rules,” he said.
“We can model these based on the current draft framework and ATO guidance, but practitioners need to understand that these are estimates until final rules are confirmed.”
Tokhi said an additional complexity is that some of the data the tool needs simply doesn’t exist yet.
“We’re asking the system to project forward into years where contributions, investment returns, and member balances are inherently unknown. The assistant handles this by allowing practitioners to model assumptions and test scenarios, rather than treating future projections as certainties,” he explained.
“BGL has been running AI assistants in Simple Fund 360 for around two years, so we’ve had time to learn what practitioners actually need: accuracy, explainability, and audit-readiness. That experience has been invaluable in designing the Div 296 assistant, particularly in balancing technical depth with usability, and ensuring the system can adapt quickly as legislation and reporting requirements evolve.”
He continued that BGL has been hearing significant concerns from SMSF professionals who have clients who may be close to the $3 million threshold.
“A major driver is uncertainty. Trustees want to understand whether their total superannuation balance will be affected across all super interests, how earnings attribution works in an SMSF, and what this could mean for retirement planning over the next five to 10 years,” he added.
Simple Fund 360’s Div 296 roadmap is being delivered in two phases.
Phase 1 focuses on the compliance foundations practitioners need immediately. This includes a separate Div 296 fund earnings dataset, proportional time-weighted attribution through our year-end process, disabling manual allocation overrides to ensure calculation integrity, storing annual attribution percentages for auditability, supporting dual CGT cost bases and the CGT election, adding dedicated Div 296 workpapers, and introducing validation warnings to flag common errors before they become problems.
Phase 2 builds on that foundation with optimisation and explainability tools. This phase adds reconciliation and “ATO View” reports so practitioners can see exactly how the ATO will view fund data, enhanced Create Entries reporting with standard explanations, actuarial support flagging and exports, CGT reset reporting, SuperStream release authority support for Div 296 payments and practice-level insights to help firms proactively identify which funds are likely to be impacted across their entire client base.
“The AI program handles the underlying calculations and attribution mechanics effectively because they are rule-based processes that can be consistently applied to real fund data,” Tokhi said.
“The assistant includes clear disclaimers stating that it is a planning tool, not professional advice. It is built using the current draft framework and ATO guidance, but practitioners remain responsible for reviewing outputs and applying their professional judgement, particularly while the legislation is still proposed.”
However, he said it’s important to be clear about the boundaries.
“The assistant is designed to support planning and explanation, and it does not replace professional judgment or calculate a member’s final Div 296 tax liability. Only the ATO can do that, because only the ATO has visibility of a member’s total superannuation balance across all super interests,” he said.
The Division 296 Planning AI Assistant is available now in beta for select Simple Fund 360 users.
“We released it in beta specifically because Div 296 remains proposed legislation. That allows us to gather practitioner feedback, refine usability, and adapt quickly as the final rules and ATO reporting requirements are confirmed,” Tokhi said.
“Once the legislation is finalised, we will release it to all BGL users.”
will wait and see if it is wonderful