Come 1st of July 2014 and any employer with more than 20 employees under his belt will have to be really diligent in providing details of his superannuation contribution. SuperStream, also referred to as Data and Payment Standards, asks all the employers (passing the ’20 employee’ criterion) to pay super payments to their employees with the help of the government’s payment system.
Electronic super payments (contributions)
Put in perspective, it implies that employers will cease writing any further ‘super’ checks to their employees and make electronic super payments instead. Apart from making payments to the superfunds electronically, employers will also have to pass requisite information pertaining to the employee’s tax file number and super fund member number.
Quicker and more transparent
At present, we are given to believe, the crediting of ‘super’ contributions to the nominated account takes weeks. The transition to electronic payments will reduce this timeframe to only about a few days. In addition, this will make the whole set up more transparent; what with super fund members getting frequent notifications if their contributions are not received in expected time.
Sense of vagueness
The smart data matching technique is bound to streamline what was a clearly a concern. The growing SMSF market thoroughly deserves SuperStream one must say. Accountants, administrators and trustees have long felt a sense of ambiguity in regards to the superfunds. Now, it is out in the open that they have an obligation to meet.
Here is looking forward to the golden hour for trustees- after all, they can surely anticipate lower admin costs and far more streamlined service.
Do you see any loophole in the electronic payment strategy?
