The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has confirmed trustees of self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) will now be able to add a fifth and sixth members, after administrative delays.
The changes came into place on 1 July, 2021, but the Australian Business Register (ABR) suffered delays in allowing trustees to make this change and recommended trustees held off from adding new members.
Trustees were advised to check if their state or territory restricted the number of trustees and if the addition would affect any other regulatory requirements.
The ATO said: “The increase in the maximum number of members in a SMSF also has flow on effects for other requirements, such as signing financial statements. The accounts and statements (an operating statement and a statement of financial position) of an SMSF must be signed by the required number of trustees or directors of the corporate trustee.
“This number will depend on the number of trustees or directors of the corporate trustee that your SMSF has. For the 2021/22 and later financial years, if there are:
Super funds had a “tremendous month” in November, according to new data.
Australia faces a decade of deficits, with the sum of deficits over the next four years expected to overshoot forecasts by $21.8 billion.
APRA has raised an alarm about gaps in how superannuation trustees are managing the risks associated with unlisted assets, after releasing the findings of its latest review.
Compared to how funds were allocated to March this year, industry super funds have slightly decreased their allocation to infrastructure in the six months to September – dropping from 11 per cent to 10.6 per cent, according to the latest APRA data.