Several industry executives have called for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to be given powers to become a “genuine” superannuation regulator for the super fund industry.
Speaking at the Australian Institute of Super Trustees administration symposium in Melbourne, Sandy Grant, trustee director of CareSuper, said that for the Cooper Review’s SuperStream proposals to work, the ATO needed to become a “genuine superannuation regulator”, and enabled to not only fulfil its current superannuation tasks, but also any tasks that it is given in addition.
Grant also said the industry needed to adopt a greater level of e-commerce and use tax file numbers (TFN) to identify members.
“If [all three] aren’t delivered, then our scope to achieve the benefits we are looking for out of Superstream will be very, very badly damaged,” Grant said.
Graham Sammells, chief executive of IQ Business Group, said the ATO needed to provide an “online, secure, authenticated service” for funds and super administrators that validate members’ TFNs.
“It has to be able to be done on an individual basis and on a batch basis, and it has to be quick. Administrators might receive a batch of new entrants [to the super fund] that might total hundreds or thousands of entries at a time.
“There’s got to be a proper service provider to the ATO to be able to give this information back to the administrators,” Sammells said.
“It’s incredibly important the role that the ATO has got to play here,” he said.
