The federal government’s plan to defer the extension of SuperStream to include SMSF rollovers until early 2021 has become official with the regulations made and released at the end of last week.
Under the terms of the deferment, announced as part of the 2019 budget, the extension of SuperStream to SMSF rollovers will now take place on 31 March 2021, which is 21 months after draft laws were released and four months later than the original start date of 30 November 2019.
The draft laws relating to the extension were released in July 2018 and introduced into parliament in October 2018, before being deferred in April this year on the grounds the extension would allow all components of the SuperStream system to be operational at the same time.
Since the deferral, the government and ATO have both commented on the new, later date for the commencement, with Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology Jane Hume saying the government would proceed with the extension timetable as outlined in the budget, while the ATO indicated it would continue to engage with its SuperStream Reference Group on the changes.
The SuperStream extension was one of the few specific SMSF-related measures released in the budget, which also included a change in the methodology under which superannuation funds calculate exempt current pension income.
