ASFA raises doubts about ATO's online rollover portal
Questions have been raised about the ability of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to provide an online portal capable of adequately supporting superannuation rollovers.
While supporting the concept of such a portal, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) said it had concerns about the ability of a member to initiate the rollover of those benefits through the ATO on-line portal.
The organization said it also had concerns about the implications of specific types of accounts being subject to rollover requests through the Commissioner of Taxation.
In a submission filed with Treasury this week, ASFA said it was gravely concerned about the ability of a person to request the rollover of an allocated pension, an account based pension or a market linked income stream through the Commissioner of Taxation.
"The decision to change pension providers is not straightforward and to liken it to rolling over an accumulation account benefit is to misunderstand the law and practice," the ASFA submission said.
It said that, in practice, a pension could not be rolled over because it was a contractual arrangement between the pension issuer and the member.
The ASFA submission said that, additionally, if a market linked pension currently enjoyed exemption from the pension assets test, that exemption was non-transferrable and would be lost immediately the pension was commuted.
"This may have significant adverse impact on the members' Centrelink entitlements," it said.
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