Catastrophic bush fires continue to cause unimaginable loss and damage. In their aftermath, the loss of regular income from employment and businesses will cause ongoing financial stress to many who may well be asking if they can access their superannuation. Others may wonder if they may access their superannuation to assist those in need. SMSF members, as...
Recent press has drawn attention to the risk of inadvertently converting a member balance to unrestricted non-preserved. This effects both the total super balance treatment of certain SMSF limited recourse borrowings and also to members’ transfer balance accounts arising from the transfer of transition to retirement pensions to retirement phase pensions, potentially breaching the transfer balance...
SMSF trustees cannot claim travel expenses relating to residential investment property. This restriction has been in place since 1 July 2018 but is still not widely known. Removing this deduction reduces the potential of it being used as an early release mechanism whereby the SMSF is used to fund an annual trustee holiday to some exotic...
Though its application is limited, there is a new work test exemption for super contributions that’s been effective since 1 July 2019. A voluntary super contribution can now be made for a member, over age 65 but under age 75, in the first income year after retirement. This means that a 67-year-old individual, that retired in the...
The Holy Grail of the small business CGT exemptions is the 15 year exemption which provides, not only CGT exemptness, but also a $1.515M super contribution irrespective of a member’s total super balance. Be careful though. Apart from the obvious qualification requirements, over 55 and either small business and relevant assets of less than $6m or turnover...
The Assistant ATO Commissioner responsible for the SMSF segment, Dana Fleming, was involved in a robust exchange with an attendee at the SMSF Summit yesterday. The attendee’s octogenarian client had rolled a pension from an SMSF into an APRA fund and, due to the TBAR timing mismatch, had received a TBA breach notice which caused the...
Assistant Commissioner, Dana Fleming, gave an address at the CAANZ conference I was at recently. I thought a few of the highlights were worth sharing. The ATO is very pleased with the level of compliance and lodgement timeliness of the SMSF sector. In fact, its metrics are better than any of the other sectors. In the 2019 financial...
The ATO has introduced a new incentive to encourage on-time lodgement of SMSF returns. From 1 October 2019, if an SMSF is more than two weeks overdue on any annual return lodgment due date and hasn't requested a lodgment deferral, the Fund’s status on Super Fund Lookup will be changed to 'Regulation details removed'. This will be assessed...