SPAA defends ATO as SMSF regulator
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is the right regulatory body to oversee the self-managed super fund (SMSF) sector, according to SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA) chief executive Andrea Slattery.
“All the evidence suggests that the ATO does an excellent job regulating this sector, and calls for SMSFs to come under the umbrella of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) are both mischievous and illogical,” she said.
“The claim is that the SMSF sector is under-regulated; nothing could be further from the truth.”
Having regulated the administration and operation of SMSFs since 1999, the ATO has always regulated the taxation of SMSFs and APRA-regulated funds.
The ATO has also been handed prudential powers by APRA to regulate the auditors, actuaries and trustees of SMSFs.
Yet the ATO’s key strength, according to SPAA, lies in its ability to regulate fraud and theft – something over which APRA (as noted in the recent Trio Capital inquiry) does not have regulatory powers.
“The fact remains that APRA does not have the resources to oversee nearly 500,000 SMSFs, with its audit program simply not structured to handle small funds,” she said.
“By contrast, the ATO has been able to build the resources and the expertise – which is why SMSFs were transferred from APRA to the ATO in 1999.”
Slattery said that facts or figures were never forthcoming when there were claims that the ATO was failing in its regulatory role.
“[It’s] just the claim that SMSFs are ‘lightly regulated’ and that APRA would be a more appropriate regulator,” she said.
“The criticism ignores the fact that each fund has to be independently audited each year, which means the performance of the trustees is constantly being reviewed and scrutinised.
“It really shows that the criticism is generally due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the SMSF sector and the actual regulatory role that the ATO has,” Slattery said.
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