Employers with fewer than twenty (20) employees need to be “superstream” compliant by 1 July 2015!

The advent of “superstream” will enable employers to make a single payment for superannuation to a nominated superannuation ‘clearing house’, which itself will distribute to the various funds used by employees.  As far as the employer is concerned, after the upfront registration of employees’ preferred fund detail is incorporated in the process, the employer simply inserts the relevant amounts for each employee then makes only one online payment.

The use of the clearing house should facilitate compliance with legislated superannuation obligations and do so with minimum time, paperwork and cost!

To register with a clearing house the employer will need to provide it with the following detail:

ABN

Email address

Employee detail

–        tax file number

–        employment start date

–        fund’s bank account information

–        electronic service delivery address for receipt of contribution data messages

Essentially, the process requires employers to remit contributions electronically in a standard format with linked data and payments!  Employees with self-managed superannuation funds need to provide their employer with the fund’s ABN and bank account details together with an ‘electronic service address’ or ‘alias’ to enable the fund to receive confirmation of amounts and reference details.

The ‘electronic service address’ is different to a regular email address and may be obtained from various ‘message providers’ – a list of registered SMSF message providers is available online at www.ato.gov.au/superstream.

The Australian Taxation Office provides a free online service through the Small Business Superannuation Clearing House and registration can be undertaken online through www.ato.gov.au.

The MYOB AccountRight version 2015.2 software ‘PaySuper’ currently being released complies with superstream requirements.

Contact Us for any advice or assistance you may require in the introduction of these new procedures.