CEO of the Noah Group, Brett Marks, believes the Australian Tax Office is stepping up its focus on self-managed super funds and has warned trustees of these funds to beware.
Fortunately though the Noah Group and its licensed professionals can help clients set up their own SMSF and use it to leverage into property, while adhering to the recently-imposed new rules in the SMSF industry. For anyone disheartened by their under-performing super funds (and have approximately $120,000 in super), the Noah Group can assist you in entering the property market through your own property trust by leveraging your super. As a result of the September 2007 revisions to the SIS Act, the process of leveraging your super into property has been formally allowed in Australia and with it, the potential to yield great returns.
The Noah Group reports that as of the 1st of July, 2008, the tax office now requires fund auditors to report any of a long list of legal contraventions by trustees of funds.
Two of these contraventions include providing financial assistance to members or their relatives and the breaching of the sole purpose test (that requires funds to be maintained for the core purpose of providing retirement and death benefits for members).
Newly formed funds are subject to additional contraventions - automatically reportable to the ATO - including exceeding the in-house asset ratio (i.e. funds are not allowed to invest more than 5% of their assets, including fund assets, with related parties), failing to purchase assets on an arm’s length basis, and borrowing from a SMSF (certain exceptions exist for short-term loans).
The tax office is creating the opportunity to stamp out bad habits early by becoming well-equipped in concentrating more efforts on new trustees who are failing to comply with superannuation laws.
The Noah Group says that findings by a recent tax office survey of new trustees and highlighted by Smart Investing on several occasions, showed that 30% of those surveyed could not explain the most fundamental of all SMSF rules, the sole-purpose test. And a quarter of new trustees surveyed were unaware of restrictions on the type of assets that their funds could acquire.
Understandably these findings have been a rude shock to Minister for Superannuation, Nick Sherry, as well as many senior tax officials.
Having your financial planner and accountant involved in your investment structure when using a SMSF is crucial, the Noah Group says, in avoiding the pitfalls associated with not fulfilling your obligations under the current taxation acts.














