Published by Self Managed Super Magazine
Written by Darin Tyson-Chan on 24 January 2019
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The ATO has announced its willingness to help practitioners and their SMSF clients comply with the new non-concessional contributions cap limits.
Under the recent super reforms, the non-concessional contributions cap dropped to $100,000 a year as of 1 July 2017. Further, superannuants with a total super balance in excess of $1.6 million for the 2018 financial year are deemed ineligible to make these types of contributions for the year.
To better ensure individuals comply with these rules, the ATO has announced practitioners can request confirmation of an individual’s total superannuation balance.
The regulator stipulated requests can be made through the Tax Agent Portal and advised a mail message should be sent with the topic of superannuation being specified with non-concessional cap balance as the subject.
“In your message tell us if the total superannuation balance request is for all of your linked clients or for specific clients and provide the relevant tax file numbers (TFN). You can add a spreadsheet of TFNs if the request is for more than 10 clients,” it noted.
According to the regulator, practitioners asking for confirmation of client total superannuation balances can expect to receive the information within 28 days of the request.
The data provided will be based on past returns lodged by super funds. To this end, the ATO warned the information provided may not be entirely up to date due to the timing of lodgement schedules.
Further, the ATO qualified the type of information it is able to provide using this procedure.
“We are unable to provide bulk non-concessional bring-forward information. Clients with an active bring-forward arrangement can access this information by logging in to their myGov account,” it said.
