{"id":868,"date":"2016-03-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/?p=868"},"modified":"2016-08-03T05:18:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T05:18:58","slug":"ato-warns-on-poor-asset-records-causing-smsf-breaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/ato-warns-on-poor-asset-records-causing-smsf-breaches\/","title":{"rendered":"ATO warns on poor asset records causing SMSF breaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ATO has stressed the importance of clearly distinguishing\u00a0SMSF\u00a0assets, with some funds losing assets to lenders following personal debts because they were not recorded correctly.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking at the SMSF Association\u2019s national conference in Adelaide last week, ATO assistant commissioner Kasey Macfarlane said it is important fund assets are clearly distinguished as such, and that legal ownership of those assets is correctly recorded in the fund\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

We have seen real-life cases where that hasn\u2019t occurred, and legal ownership of shares, for example, hasn\u2019t been correctly recorded in the fund\u2019s name, and there\u2019s been personal debts,\u201d said Ms Macfarlane.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lender has taken action to recover those personal debts and because the fund assets haven\u2019t been recorded properly, the trustee has been required to sell those fund assets to satisfy the personal debts.\u201d<\/p>\n

This not only has an impact on the member\u2019s retirement savings, she explained, but also means a breach of superannuation laws, which also potentially brings with it further financial issues in terms of administrative penalties and other compliance actions.<\/p>\n

Ms Macfarlane said while poor records of assets on its own isn\u2019t something the ATO would typically look to take compliance action against, it is important practitioners and their clients think about the broader context and purpose of those particular rules and why they are actually there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are rules that are there not just regulation for the sake of regulation, but they are actually designed to protect the fund\u2019s assets, and effectively protect member\u2019s retirement savings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also cautioned that there are different state and territory laws around recording titles or assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are also different laws around lenders protecting their security interests and then enforcing those security interests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to make sure that you\u2019re comfortable within the context of those broader laws that the way that the asset is actually recorded is going to be sufficient to protect the fund\u2019s assets, because the last thing we want to see is assets being lost out of the fund [because] of something that could have been taken care of relatively easily.”<\/p>\n

\nMiranda Brownlee
\nThursday, 25 February 2016
\naccountantsdaily.com.au<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ATO has stressed the importance of clearly distinguishing\u00a0SMSF\u00a0assets, with some funds losing assets to lenders following personal debts because they were not recorded correctly.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}