A senior sector executive has alerted practitioners to an operational characteristic some administrative software applications have incorporated that may complicate SMSF trustees’ adherence to an ATO release authority.
Heffron SMSF technical and education services director Leigh Mansell noted the issue may arise when trustees choose to comply with a release authority and have the amount in question paid from a pension interest.
“What you might find though is the software that you use might take you down a [particular] path. Our experience is you’ve got to comply with SuperStream when you’re dealing with release authorities,” Mansell told attendees of the SMSF Association Technical Summit 2026 recently held in Sydney.
“Some of the software providers have programmed their [product] so you can only pay a release authority from an accumulation account.
“And so if you want [the release authority amount] to be paid from a pension account … you probably [will have to] talk to your software provider to find out how [you] can make this happen because we want [the payment] to come out of a pension account if that’s what you decide to do.”
She took the opportunity to assure advisers there are no restrictions as to which superannuation interest a release authority can be paid from.
“The legislation talks about releasing an amount from super, [but] it doesn’t talk about lump sums [and] it doesn’t talk about particular account balances [from which a release authority has to be paid],” she confirmed.
In addition, she pointed out a release authority payment can be made directly from a pension interest without having to make any special arrangements to do so.
To this end, she dispelled any misconceptions either practitioners or SMSF members might have in the belief a pension would need to be partially commuted with the release authority amount rolled back to an accumulation interest before compliance with the instruction could be achieved.
Darin Tyson-Chan
Editor
Darin is the founder and publisher of Benchmark Media, an independent publishing house whose mastheads include financialobserver, selfmanagedsuper and smstrusteenews. He has been covering the financial services space for over a decade and in this time he has worked for a variety of trade publications. Darin has also written for the Money section published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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