Can you be your own accountant for your SMSF?

It is definitely more suitable for those with more time on their hands – a commodity not necessarily in surplus for business owners.

Dealing with the ATO

In our article on ways that SMSFs can be ultra low cost we explain everything you need to do to set up an SMSF yourself, from creating a trust deed to putting together an investment strategy. However, one thing you will need to keep doing after you’ve set up an SMSF is to lodge its tax return and financial statements and pay the supervisory levy each year.

Depending on your balance and what happens with your SMSF during the year, you may also have transfer balance account reporting requirements.

Currently there is no direct ATO portal for SMSFs, but SMSFs can lodge their SMSF annual return electronically or by paper with the ATO.

If trustees don’t want to lodge electronically via a tax agent (which the ATO reports the majority do) they can lodge through the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) portal.

To do that, the SMSF will need:

• A machine credential (apply for a machine credential here)
• SBR-enabled business software.

As mentioned earlier, one thing you won’t be able to do yourself is audit your SMSF. Even if you are an auditor you still need your SMSF independently audited by a third party every year.

Your auditor must be registered with ASIC as an approved SMSF auditor. Check their database of auditors here.

Dealing with ASIC

If you have a corporate trustee structure for your SMSF you will need to pay ASIC fees each year and notify ASIC of any changes to the trustee company. Directors can do this via ASIC’s company officeholders portal.

SMSF software

There is a vast range of SMSF software products available for trustees to help manage and administer their fund. However, if you want to pass information directly to the ATO and ASIC, it is probably better to use SMSF software that is also SBR-enabled. The table below shows products the ATO lists as providing SMSF annual return (SMSFAR) reporting.

Depending on what level of service you are after, the products provide varied levels of SMSF administration, technical and investment assistance.

Key dates

1. ATO annual return and supervisory levy

If you lodge your SMSF annual return yourself, the due date is generally 28 February the following financial year. If you did not lodge your return for the previous financial year on time, the due date will be 31 October. For your first year, the due date is 31 October.

2. Corporate trustees

ASIC will send you an annual statement for your registration fees shortly after your annual review date, which is the anniversary of the day you registered the corporate trustee.

The fee must be paid by the due date or there will be a late payment fee.

• Payment up to one month late – $83
• Payment more than one month late – $344

3. Transfer balance account reporting (TBAR)

SMSFs paying a pension are also required to report transfer balance events. The main kind of transfer balance event will be the details of a new retirement phase or death benefit income streams.

The due date for reporting a transfer balance event will depend on the size of the pension account balance and the total super balances of members. When all members of an SMSF have a total super balance of less than $1 million, the fund only needs to report transfer balance events once a year with their annual SMSF tax return. However, for funds that have any members with a total super balance of $1 million or more on 30 June the year before the first member starts their first retirement phase income stream, reporting must be done within 28 days of the end of the quarter the event occurred.

Wrap-up

It is entirely possible to do the majority of accounting for your SMSF yourself but, if this is the path you want to go down, make sure you do it for the right reasons. You will need a reasonable knowledge of accounting requirements and regulations, otherwise it might end up actually costing you more in the long run if you end up getting fined for a mistake.