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Global Bookkeeping Week 2023

Global Bookkeeping Week 2023

Nov 10, 2023

Global Bookkeeping Week 2023Today closes out Global Bookkeeping Week for 2023. This week some of our team have shared their bookkeeping tips on socials in short daily videos. Our team live and breath bookkeeping daily and as a collective have a broad and diverse skill...

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Super Choice Rules: Changes from 1st November 2021

‘Stapling’ is the new thing in super from today for employers to be aware of. 

A ‘stapled super fund’ is an existing super account which is linked – or ‘stapled’ – to an individual employee and follows them as they change jobs leading to less account duplication, lower fees, and a positive impact on their future super balance.

As an employer what do you need to do?

Basically, an extra step is now required where an employee doesn’t advise of the Super fund of their choice before you resort to paying super into the business’s default fund.

This is the approach to be taken from today:

Step 1: Offer your eligible employees a choice of super fund

You need to give your eligible new employees a Super standard choice form and pay their super into the account they tell you on the form. Most employees are eligible to choose what fund their super goes into.  The most current version of the Super Choice Form can be found at 

There is no change to this step of your super obligations.

Step 2: Request stapled super fund details

If your employee doesn’t choose a super fund, you may need to log into the ATO Online services and go to ‘Employee Super Accounts’ to request their stapled super fund details. Your agent or other tax professional can do this for you if you don’t have your own access.

The ATO will provide your employee’s stapled super fund details after they have confirmed that you are their employer.

If the ATO provide a stapled super fund result for your employee, you must pay your employee’s super using the stapled super fund details they provide you.

Step 3: Pay super into a default fund

You can pay into a default fund, or another fund that meets the choice of fund obligations if:
      • your employee doesn’t choose a super fund, and
      • the ATO have advised you that they don’t have a stapled super fund.

How will the ATO select an employees stapled super fund?

The stapled super fund selection will be based on information the ATO holds about employees’ super funds.

If an employee has one existing eligible super account, this will be notified to their employer as the stapled super fund account for contributions.

To be a stapled super fund, the fund must meet a number of requirements. This includes an employee being a current member of the fund and it must be either a:

      • complying superannuation fund
      • retirement savings account
      • complying superannuation scheme.
Where an employee has multiple existing eligible super accounts, the ATO will apply ‘tiebreaker’ rules. These rules consider:
      • whether the ATO has previously identified an account as a stapled super fund
      • how recently contributions have been made to each of the accounts
      • the account balances
      • how recently each of the accounts were created.
    If an employee is concerned how the tiebreaker rules will be applied, they should use a super standard choice form to nominate their preferred fund to their employer.
     

    The ATO have created a short video to help employees better understand stapled funds which can be found by scrolling to the bottom of the page at this link