The real-time pension reporting requirements for SMSFs are still yet to be determined after a recent announcement on the subject excluded any compliance standards for the sector.
“What it does mean is there is something on the way out for us. The fact that they’ve excluded SMSFs from that documentation means that we will see something sooner rather than later that identifies what our pension reporting obligations will be in the SMSF world,” Miller Super Solutions founder Tim Miller said at the Super Reforms Masterclass held in Melbourne recently.
According to Miller, the only thing practitioners can use currently as a guide for real-time pension reporting is the old reasonable benefit limit reporting system that contained certain flaws from both a reporting and a data collection perspective.
“So there are a lot of efficiencies they need to fix up in that area,” he said.
He revealed one of the most common questions he is being asked by practitioners currently is how do they have to report on pensions and when do they have to do it.
“The [information relating to] CGT (capital gains tax) we know how to report. It’s going to be reported as part of the 2016/17 regulatory return under the normal CGT reporting where there will effectively be a box to allow the election to be made,” he said.
“But a lot of the other stuff, the pensions and those sorts of things, are going to require a huge revamp because, as a lot of you would know, member statements are reported collectively.
“So Tim Miller one member. How many interests do I have? Our software might report that, but our financial statements or our regulatory return doesn’t.
‘So moving forward we’re going to have to split that information so the ATO can identify how much we have in pension versus how much we have in accumulation.”
He said these are the types of items and issues that are still being addressed in the lead-up to 1 July.
