And what are SMSFs actually investing in?
Class, an SMSF administration software company, has released its latest data on the investments held by SMSFs at 30 June 2026. See which shares, funds and ETFs were the most popular:
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Should you develop a retirement income strategy for your SMSF?
The Retirement Income Covenant doesn’t apply to SMSFs, but the reasoning behind a retirement income strategy still applies to your fund.
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The SMSF trustee declaration explained
Every SMSF trustee or corporate trustee director must sign their own ATO trustee declaration. Skip it, and the ATO can penalise every trustee individually.
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The importance of liquidity in an SMSF
A self-managed super fund can look wealthy on paper and still be unable to pay a pension on time. Liquidity is the difference.
Upcoming webinar
Related party transactions: The SMSF rules you need to know
Thursday 22 October 2026 at 11:00 am AEDT
Related party transactions remain one of the most important and often misunderstood areas of SMSF compliance.
In this webinar, we identify who is subject to the relevant rules and explore common issues that often arise when an SMSF transacts with related parties, including:
- The arm’s length rules
- Providing services to your SMSF
- Acquiring assets from a related party and selling assets to a related party
- Loans and leases to or from your SMSF
- How the in-house asset rules operate in practice
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Watch our previous webinar, SuperGuide members Q&A: September 2026
Q&A of the month
Q: This year I need to take my minimum 4% account-based pension payment. Rather than selling exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to fund the payment, can I simply use available cash from recent deposits into the cash management account? My understanding is that this is largely an accounting/allocation exercise, the auditor can allocate contributions to my partner’s accumulation account and record the pension withdrawal against my pension balance, and whether the pension payment is funded from cash on hand or from selling ETFs shouldn’t make a difference, provided the accounts are correctly recorded. Am I thinking about this correctly, or am I missing something?
A: Where pension payments can come from depends on whether the fund’s assets are segregated, or pooled together with the fund’s accumulation assets. The standard position is that the assets of a self-managed super fund (SMSF) are pooled for all member accounts inside the fund, and are not separated into accumulation or pension assets.
If you have taken steps to segregate the pension assets, with a portion of fund assets held in the accumulation phase and a separately identified portion held in the retirement (pension) phase, then payments from the assets supporting the accumulation phase can’t satisfy the minimum pension payment requirements. Pension payments must be drawn from the segregated pension assets.
If assets are pooled, then payments drawn from any of the fund’s assets can be used to satisfy minimum pension payment requirements, with appropriate accounting entries made to specify the purpose and source of each withdrawal. So, if you have not taken specific steps to identify certain fund assets as either pension phase assets or accumulation phase assets, it would not really matter where the pension cash comes from.
Learn more about segregated assets and calculating exempt current pension income for both segregated and pooled assets.
Calendar reminders of the month
28 October
Transfer balance account reporting: Where any transfer balance event has occurred between 1 July 2026 and 30 September 2026, you are required to report these events by lodging a transfer balance account report (TBAR) by this date.
GST lodgement: If your self-managed super fund (SMSF) is registered for goods and services tax (GST), your business activity statement (BAS) is now due.
31 October
SMSF annual return (SAR): You need to lodge your annual return and auditor’s report by this date if you are a first-time lodger or were a late lodger last year.
