These alerts can come via email or text message if a person registers a new SMSF or makes any changes to an existing fund.
Changes that will trigger an alert include altering financial institution account details, an electronic service address (ESA), an authorised contact, or members of the fund.
The ATO continued that messages from the Tax Office do not ask trustees to reply or provide personal details such as a tax file number or personal banking details.
It advised that if a trustee receives a text or email about a new SMSF registration or changes made to an existing SMSF and they are unaware of the changes, they should contact the other trustees or directors of the SMSF and authorised representatives to check if they have made the changes.
If they’re still concerned about a new SMSF registration or changes that have been made to an existing SMSF, they should contact the ATO on 13 10 20.
The ATO added that to safeguard super, it is important to keep email and mobile phone details up to date as this will ensure trustees continue to receive alerts.
Problem with these messages is that they are both vague and random. EVERY time a client gets one, it sends them into a state of panic. They also get sent when you lodge a tax return with NO changes to anything else. Why not just say “we’ve received your super fund tax return”. They are hit and miss, some get them, some don’t. They are unhelpful and plain annoying.
These ATO alerts have been spurious since inception. Triggered by innocuous things like changes in accounting software. All these messages do is freak taxpayers out and we tax agents then have to calm them down by investigating and telling them it is just another ATO blunder. Is that the image you really want to engender for the public service?
You would be better placed sending such messages to tax agents, but it’s evident the ATO does not trust its own agents.
This is a disturbing general trend with the ATO inappropriately approaching taxpayers when a tax agent has been duly appointed. Your proliferation of pushing taxpayers to execute transactions on MyGOV also cuts agents out of the loop, with no correspondence or knowledge of many transactions…..yet we still take the blame when they go wrong.
Make up your mind Commissioner. Abolish tax agents if you think you can go “retail” with all your customers this way!