Financial planners with SMSF clients feel excluded from the transfer balance account report (TBAR) process due to poor communication practices that currently exist among themselves, accountants, trustees and administrators, according to a specialist SMSF adviser.
Verante Financial Planning director and recently appointed SMSF Association board member Liam Shorte told selfmanagedsuper that with financial planners making stock recommendations or changes in pension arrangements for clients, improved communication between planners and accountants is vital in providing an accurate TBAR.
“We feel slightly left afield or kept out of the loop, especially when we’re making recommendations to clients,” Shorte said.
“There’s a danger then that without good communication between the financial planner and accountant some of the reporting requirements will be missed.”
The requirements for SMSF trustees with more than $1 million in the fund mean accountants who saw their clients at the end of the year will have to see them at least two to four times a year to ensure they have not missed any details in the reporting.
“That sometimes will have to go through the financial planner because the clients themselves may not be familiar with their reporting obligations,” Shorte said.
“So I think everybody’s got to work as a team to make sure that they comply with the law.”
Further, SMSF trustees who also have benefits held in a public offer superannuation fund face the danger of not being properly serviced by an accountant for TBAR purposes because the practitioner does not have direct access to the client’s entire superannuation information as a financial planner may have.
“The professionals are relying on the trustees themselves or the member to disclose that they’ve got their entire super situation and that they do have the defined government pensions,” Shorte said.
“It’s purely a case of just making sure the professionals ask a lot of questions and trustees understand their entire super is counted, not just what’s in their SMSFs.”
While the ATO will be lenient on trustees in the first year of TBAR as they become accustomed to the new requirements, he warned this may not be the case going forward and said it is important for professionals to aim for accuracy so clients are not disadvantaged.
“Get on the ATO website, understand exactly what type of pension the clients have, and find out how they have calculated for the TBAR and the total superannuation balance reporting,” he suggested.
