Hayes Knight director of superannuation services Ray Itaoui said there seems to be a view that the profession can hold off until 1 July 2018 before dealing with the issue of events-based reporting.
“That’s a dangerous position. The requirements of the law are quite clear. Despite the reporting concession, events-based reporting still needs to be completed for events occurring within the fund from 1 July 2017,” explained Mr Itaoui.
“If practitioners don’t have their systems in place now, filling in the gaps for events that occurred across the year will waste time and lead to errors and anomalies.”
The new TBAR forms, he said, are not ideal with SMSF practitioners and their clients only able to report one event per lodgement.
“This is not ideal and is likely to at least initially cause huge administrative issues in scenarios where there are multiple events to report,” he said.
“As online lodgement is not available until January 2018, it is unlikely that practitioners will utilise the form, further perpetuating the delay in commencing the reporting process.”
