The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) is calling for an amendment to the 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 had been captured by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) since 31 December, after the threshold for the transfer of funds from inactive accounts rose to $6,000.
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 per cent of respondents agreed that inactive or dormant super funds accounts should be consolidated into the active accounts of their rightful owners, as opposed to being captured as ATO-held unclaimed super.
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.
