When winding up a self-managed super fund (SMSF), you need to make sure that:
- you deal with members' benefits according to the super law and the trust deed
- your fund has no assets left once it has been wound up.
When you wind up your SMSF and pay benefits to a member, they must meet a condition of release allowing them to access their benefits. If they don't meet this condition or don't want to access their benefits when the fund winds up, you'll need to roll over the benefits to another complying super fund.
There are serious penalties for accessing your super before you are legally allowed.
There may be capital gains tax (CGT) implications for your SMSF on the disposal of assets to enable the payment of benefits or the rollover of benefits to another fund.
If one or more of your members are in retirement phase you will need to consider if you have any transfer balance account reporting obligations when winding up your fund.
All SMSFs must report events that affect their member's transfer balance account. Your member's account is debited when they fully or partially commute a retirement phase income stream. This can be paid out of the super system in a lump sum, or it can be transferred to another fund. The value of this commutation needs to be reported to us on a super transfer balance account report (TBAR) at the time it occurs.
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You must ensure members' benefits are dealt with in accordance with the super law and trust deed, and that your fund has no assets left once it is wound up.