Hold off on account closure during SMSF wind-up
SMSF trustees looking to wind up their fund would have to consider any liabilities needing to be paid as part of the winding-up process before closing their SMSF’s bank account, according to a range of technical experts.
Speaking in a webinar hosted by Accurium on Monday, Evolv chief executive Arthur Favos said a common query received by the audit firm around SMSF wind-ups was how soon a fund’s account needed to be closed as part of the wind-up process.
“A lot of people think you’ve got to close the account at the point that the fund is wound up and before you go into audit,” Mr Favos said.
“The ATO guidelines say that the majority of assets should be rolled out at that stage, but you should leave enough in the account to cover things like audit fees and tax liabilities, then lodge your final return once you get your audit report. So, you don’t close your account until everything is actually finalised.”
SuperGuardian education manager Tim Miller added that it was important enough cash was left in the SMSF’s bank account to cover relevant expenses rather than the trustee having to pay for these in a personal capacity.
“Any expenses of the fund should be paid by the fund — you don’t want to start to mess with contributions or reimbursements because they can lead to an untidy approach from an audit point of view,” Mr Miller said.
“So, as much as possible, pay everything from the SMSF directly even if you are holding it in a non-interest bearing account.”
SuperGuardian associate director and senior client manager Jason Poser added that any outstanding credits to the SMSF also needed to be considered, including tax refunds that could be payable after the fund had been wound up.
“We get a lot of questions around whether trustees want to leave the bank account open if they are getting a tax refund, because they could then have issues trying to bank that cheque if there’s no cash account for the SMSF,” Mr Poser said.
“We don’t want to be afraid of leaving that account open — the interest and other small transactions aren’t a major issue and the auditor is going to be pretty comfortable with those transactions.”
However, Mr Miller clarified that in some situations if the SMSF was likely to have large ongoing transactions into the next financial year, it may be more practical to delay the winding up of the fund.
“If someone is winding up an SMSF in the accumulation phase, you might have a quarterly SG contribution you are unaware of that the employer doesn’t pay into the account until next financial year, so that is received as income and you can’t wind up the fund until [the following] 30 June,” he said.
“You need to have awareness of the transactions that might occur and be up front with the trustees to say you need to transfer into the next year and wind it up then.”
