The anticipation of upcoming superannuation legislation meant advisers must ensure trustees were informed of any changes that affected SMSFs and their responsibilities, according to AMP SMSF head of policy and technical Peter Burgess.
“There are a few things that look like they will happen this year – a new penalty regime for trustees, which the government has decided to proceed with and is intended to come in from 1 July 2014,” Burgess told selfmanagedsuper.
“So that’s a change trustees will need to be aware of.”
The new penalty for SMSFs meant any breach reported in an auditor contravention report could result in fund trustees personally facing heavy fines issued by the Australian Taxation Office.
“Certainly in our view it underlies the importance of professional administrators to assist people to comply with the rules and so forth,” Burgess said.
“In terms of legislative change, that’s the main one, but we know that the other measures that had previously been announced are not going to be pursued by the government.
“We’ve got all the enquiries happening too, of course, so it will be an important year for the superannuation industry generally and also for SMSFs.”
He said the commencement of SuperStream this year would also impact on SMSFs.
“Statistics show over 100,000 SMSFs will be impacted by SuperStream from 1 July 2014,” he said.
“They’ll have to accept employer contributions from large employers who are not related electronically, so there’s a need for SMSFs to obtain that electronic address and so forth, so a few things need to happen there.”
In response to whether AMP would look to make any changes to its approach to technical SMSF support this year, he said there was not a demand for further services or offerings amid the new legislative changes.
“We provide a high level of technical support, in our view, through the various services, so we’re not seeing advisers asking for more,” he said.
