In 2023 we stopped sending yearly mail outs to auditors with lists of SMSFs that reported an auditor's SAN on the SMSF annual return (SAR) for a specific year. Now, auditors can ask for these lists from us, if they are worried about SAN misuse.
Auditors can request the list through Online services for business (OSB). The list will show funds that reported the auditor's SAN where we could not find a matching auditor completion advice (ACA).
This financial year, only 21 auditors have requested a list of SMSFs reporting their SAN.
By checking the responses to these lists and matching audit complete advice (ACA) with SMSF annual returns (SARs), we found 13 cases of SAN misuse involving 11 tax agents and 79 SMSFs. Of these, 6 were deliberate instances of SAN misuse and 7 were inadvertent misuse.
When we find deliberate SAN misuse by a tax agents, we refer them to the Tax Practitioner's Board (TPB), which may apply sanctions. This year, we referred 7 cases to the TPB, which issued 5 cautions.
We encourage auditors to lodge an Audit complete advice through OSB after completing the audit so we can identify potential SAN misuse.
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