The SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA) has opposed suggestions that SMSFs should be regulated by APRA. In response to a claim that the SMSF sector is under-regulated, SPAA CEO Andrea Slattery said: “All the evidence suggests that the ATO does an excellent job regulating this sector, and calls for SMSFs to come under the umbrella of APRA are both mischievous and illogical.” Mrs Slattery 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”. She said 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”.
Source: SPAA media release, 19 September 2012
[FJM Comment: I was surprised by this affirmation of the ATO, as there was a time when the only thing the ATO could do was treat the fund as non-complying and halve its value (I thought that putting a Revenue collector in charge of super funds was like putting ‘Dracula in charge of the blood bank’). But increasingly I’m seeing action taken against the trustee or the auditor rather than the fund. And in combination with the measures (reported in this edition) to make SMSF auditors register with the ASIC, SPAA might be right.]
[LTN 183, 20/9]