The ATO has confirmed it will be moving against trustees who have a history of failing to lodge an SMSF annual return and increasing its focus on the compliance history of professionals working in the tax and superannuation sectors.
ATO SMSF risk and intelligence director Paul Delahunty flagged the action during an online update for practitioners yesterday in which he provided updated figures for non-lodgements.
“As at 31 December 2025 we found there were around 93,000 funds that had one or more overdue lodgements, including 20,000 funds that had never lodged a return since they became registered as an SMSF,” he shared.
“The 20,000 ‘never lodged’ population are a particular concern for us as these funds are more likely to have been established for the purpose of rolling over superannuation amounts from an Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) regulated fund with the members then illegally accessing their super benefits.
“Given the number of funds that are either tardy or non-compliant with their lodgement obligations, it is an area that is getting increased scrutiny from the ATO.
“Next financial year, we intend undertaking targeted compliance action against trustees who have a history of outstanding SMSF annual returns, this could lead to them being disqualified as trustees of SMSFs,” he said.
“Importantly, for you all, this will include tax professionals. So those of you who have an SMSF it will be most appropriate to ensure that it is adhering to its lodgement obligations to avoid potential compliance action.”
Delahunty added, apart from ensuring their own funds were compliant, tax and superannuation practitioners could play a role in ensuring SMSF clients also meet reporting deadlines even though the responsibility of the obligations lay with the trustees.
“This would include maintaining regular communication throughout the year, not just at year end, ensuring that your SMSF clients understand their lodgement dates and the key steps that need to be taken in advance of lodgement, such as the preparation of financial statements and the undertaking of the annual audit, requesting complete documentation upfront, including bank statements valuations, and encouraging year round record keeping rather than year-end scrambling,” he explained.
“If a fund does miss its lodgement date it risks its compliance status being changed on Super Fund Lookup, and reflected as regulation details removed.
“When this happens, APRA funds will not be able to make rollovers of member benefits and employers are recommended not to make employer contributions.
“This will hold even greater importance following the commencement of Payday Super as the regulation details removed status remains on Super Fund Lookup until the fund’s overdue lodgements are all up to date,” he warned.
Jason Spits
SENIOR JOURNALIST
Jason is a senior journalist with Benchmark Media and writes for the selfmanagedsuper website and magazine and smstrusteenews website. He has covered financial services since 1999 and has written about life insurance, superannuation, investment management and financial advice, in both a freelance and in-house capacity, and also did a brief stint as a media manager for an industry association. He has been the editor of trade titles Money Management and Financial Standard, and was most recently senior journalist with life insurance title Riskinfo.
Articles by Jason