Legislation
The framework to implement the data and payment standards that apply to processing rollovers and super contributions is established in the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Stronger Super) Act 2012.
Rollovers
A transferring fund that pays a rollover super benefit, including a death benefit rollover, to a successor fund must provide the successor fund a statement in the approved form. For details, refer to the Taxation Administration Act 1953.
A rollover statement is not required when both funds share a common trustee. An SFT that involves the installation of a single trustee for the merging funds will avoid these reporting obligations.
Another method to transfer information outside of the data standards may be used, which applies only:
- to transfers to a 'successor fund' as defined in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997
- when both parties agree to use this method and not use the data standards.
When these conditions are not satisfied, the SFT will be treated like any other rollover. Funds should consider the SuperStream Data and Payment Standards requirements to ensure they sufficiently plan with their administrators and gateway providers to meet any applicable limitations.
For example, 2 super funds may already share a common administrator or a common registry platform. The transfer may simply involve a formal change in the fund to which particular account data is attributed. Alternatively, a merger may only involve a change in ownership of a computing platform on which account records continue to be held.
As with member-instigated rollovers, to ensure sufficient information is provided to allow correct treatment of the rollover benefit, funds will need to refer to the: