ATO takes sensible landing position on TBAR says IPA

THE Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) has commended the ATO for its announcement that events based reporting for self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) under the transfer balance account reporting (TBAR) regime will be limited to SMSFs with members with total super account balances of $1 million or more.

“The ATO is to be congratulated for this decision,” said IPA chief executive officer, Andrew Conway.

“Given the changes that occurred to superannuation that took effect from 1 July 2017, the landing point before reporting becomes mandatory is a sensible position taken by the ATO.

The SMSF industry can breathe a sigh of relief that the reporting will not impact the majority of funds in pension mode. Trustees can also rejoice as unnecessary reporting will not add to administrative burdens eating into their retirement balances.

“The relief will provide more time for the SMSF industry to adjust to a more contemporary reporting model over time. If a fund has one member in pension mode with a large balance, it will, by default cause the fund to have real time reporting in place but we believe the industry can live with this scenario compared to all-in approach across all funds.

“The $1 million threshold represents an appropriate risk based approach for the ATO to monitor breaches of the $1.6m transfer cap and is targeted to only impact likely offenders rather than the entire pension balance population,” said Mr Conway.

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