In light of the Australian Taxation Office’s announcement earlier this month that SMSFs will only need to report on a quarterly basis, and only where a member’s total balance exceeds $1 million, SMSF Association head of technical Peter Hogan warned that the long-term view is still that SMSFs, like APRA super funds, “will report on a far more regular basis”.
“It has been acknowledged that SMSFs are a long way behind in terms of the adoption of technology and administration systems and all the rest of it, and that they needed longer to get their systems up to speed,” said Mr Hogan.
APRA fund administrators, he said, are now virtually reporting on a daily basis and this includes reporting information on the total super balance and transfer balance cap transactions.
“The bottom line is that SMSFs, from a technology point of view, are a long way behind the APRA funds. The rest of the superannuation sector as well as the regulators expect them to catch up. It just won’t be in one or two years. It might be in five or six years’ time,” he said.
“The target is that perhaps 95 per cent of SMSFs within five years will actually have the technology to allow them to report on a genuine real-time basis. Whether that takes five years or 10 years, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Mr Hogan stressed that while the compulsory reporting regime for SMSFs doesn’t commence until 1 July 2018, and the reporting time frames are now longer, SMSF practitioners should still be closely monitoring their clients’ caps.
“Every practitioner with SMSF clients has an obligation to monitor the transfer balance cap transactions now, so make sure you keep track of them. And if your clients have a problem, then you need to act on that, because the ATO won’t tell you there’s a problem because they don’t know,” he cautioned.
The reason I started my SMF twenty years ago was to get away from unnecessary bureaucracy. I know how my fund is going everyday and I don’t need some public servant to interfere with it.. … Of course this is all about more fees isn’t it?
Would someone please stop this stupidity?
SMSF’s have less than 5 members; the majority of SMSF’s are husband-and-wife funds, or at the very least, family-based funds. SMSF’s can be far better tailored to meet the needs of the individual members, who are often the trustees. The members of an SMSF know what’s going on in the fund; they know how it’s performing, and they are not paying unwarranted fees.
To compare reporting requirements of SMSF’s to APRA funds is ridiculous, and ignores the very purpose of reporting.