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Amendment law needed to return unclaimed super
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) is calling for an amendment law to enable the Commissioner of Taxation to return nearly $3 billion in unclaimed super to Australians, as part of its pre-budget submission.
An additional 100,000 accounts worth $220 million had been captured by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) since December 31, after the threshold at which super funds must transfer inactive accounts to the ATO rose to $6000.
ASFA chief executive, Dr Martin Fahy, said $2.7 billion was now held in more than four million accounts as consolidated revenue under the government.
"One way to greatly improve the system is to have the ATO, which has the necessary capacity and identifying information, to return unclaimed funds currently captured by legislated threshold transfers," he said.
"This means the government could amend the Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999 to permit the Commissioner of Taxation to pay unclaimed money to an individual's current active superannuation account."
ASFA-commissioned research from October 2016 showed that 61.2 per cent of respondents agreed that inactive or dormant super funds accounts should be consolidated into a person's active superannuation account rather than going to the ATO as unclaimed superannuation.
The unclaimed super is part of a total of around $14 billion in 5.7 million lost and missing, as well as ATO held unclaimed accounts.
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