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Payment Summaries and Reporting of Incorrect Super Amounts
The Tax Office says some employers have been incorrectly including compulsory superannuation amounts as reportable employer super contributions on their employees' payment summaries for the 2009-10 income year. Reportable employer super contributions should only include additional super contributions made by an employer, for example, super contributions made on behalf of an employee under a salary sacrifice arrangement. The payments being incorrectly included cover things such as super guarantee contributions and industrial agreement (award) super contributions.
TIP: Employees should review their payment summaries and ask for amended payment summaries from their employers if they incorrectly contain compulsory super amounts as reportable employer super contributions. This is important because incorrect amounts included may affect eligibility for certain tax concessions and Centrelink benefits, and may cause a liability for the Medicare levy surcharge.
TIP: If employers have issued payment summaries to their employees that incorrectly include compulsory super amounts, they can notify affected employees and issue them with amended payment summaries. If employers have also already lodged their payment summary annual reports with the Tax Office, they will need to lodge an amended annual report.
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New SMSF Member Verification Process in the Pipeline
The Tax Office has announced that it expects to implement, later this year, a new self-managed super fund (SMSF) member verification process, which is designed to enable authorised APRA-regulated super funds and other authorised entities to confirm whether or not the member requesting a rollover is actually a member of the SMSF.
The new process adds another plank to efforts by the Tax Office to deter schemes which seek to obtain illegal early access to or release of superannuation. The first plank, which has been in operation since January this year, involved upgrading the SMSF registration process so that new SMSFs may not be displayed on the Super Fund Lookup (SFLU) Website for up to seven days while the Tax Office carries out a risk assessment of the SMSF.
TIP: The new process is expected to make processing member rollovers from superannuation funds to SMSFs more efficient and secure. However, it would be important for the Tax Office to be notified quickly of any SMSF membership changes. For example, it would be prudent to ensure name changes are appropriately dealt with before a rollover is attempted by a member.
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