The skill of trustees in valuing assets held within their SMSF has been downplayed by the ATO, which has altered its advice on the matter, with a practitioner noting this has added to concerns around how accurate figures can be provided each year.
Vincents superannuation advisory director Mailene Wheeler revealed the ATO had modified its online guidance on valuations in April to remove any reference to trustees providing valuations, which was creating difficulties for those with expertise regarding certain assets.
“Generally, when my clients have businesses or investments in an unlisted company or unlisted trust, we do not do the valuation for them,” Wheeler said at The Super Playbook 2025 event, co-hosted by the Institute of Financial Professionals Australia and The Auditors Institute in Sydney recently.
“We recommend they get a formal valuation and if they want to go to a business broker or someone that has the knowledge, they can do that, but we stay well clear of that.
“We had some clients do a trustee valuation, but that seems to no longer be an option and I do find that one particularly challenging.
“We had a case that has just settled with the ATO in court where it challenged us on valuations the SMSF trustee prepared on commercial properties.
“He owned buildings in the city. He was a mass developer of them. He had over 50 years’ knowledge and he did the valuation of the asset.
“The ATO didn’t agree and thought the difference in his valuation was there for excess concessional contributions stemming back to when we had ridiculously high excess concessional contributions tax.
“We got five formal appraisals from firms, like [global property developer] JLL, of the world that all showed his assessment and his valuation was within the range for us.
“Now, with the change to the ATO guidance he still develops or buys property within his super fund, but he’s not happy that his 50-plus years of development experience can’t be utilised to provide valuations where large property developers and their valuations were pretty close to what he got.”
