19/08/2026
Yet more regulation from GovCo.......
SMSFs face investment veto from ATO under sweeping changes
**JUST DROPPED**
The Tax Office will be given the power to veto people from moving money from a large super fund into a self-managed superannuation fund, under sweeping new changes announced by Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino.
The changes will also require SMSF trustees to pass “basic knowledge requirements,” maintain a “uniquely identifiable bank account”, pre-write their investment strategy and force newly established SMSFs to disclose whether a financial adviser was involved in their establishment and the fees charged.
The new regulatory role for the ATO will be funded by an increase in the supervisory levy for the first time since 2013, said Mulino.
“We will give the ATO a new power to prevent rollovers into SMSFs where there is a well-founded suspicion of consumer harm,” he told the National Press Club.
“These reforms are targeted at preventing harm, not creating red tape for Australians who choose to manage their retirement savings through an SMSF. For the vast majority of trustees, they reflect practices already in place, allowing us to better identify at-risk consumers and interrupt harmful practices.”
The changes are part of the government’s broader response to the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes, which caught investors with SMSFs and larger superannuation funds.
The new rules were broadly welcomed by specialist SMSF adviser Meg Heffron, who said they seemed specifically targeted at preventing fraud.
“I’m not immediately a fan of the ATO being able to ban … but I can see why you’d go that way, and so I wouldn’t be fighting that one,” Heffron said. “If the government really thinks that the ATO being able to act when they have a well-founded view that there’s a scam in place will help stop [scams] happening, then I think it’s a good thing.”
Heffron also welcomed the increase in the levy from $253 a year to $295 – provided it really does go to help enable stronger consumer protection measures to safeguard SMSF members from financial abuse, scams, fraud, misconduct, as the fact sheet accompanying the speech said.
“Money well spent, I reckon,” she said. “If that’s really what they spend the 35 bucks on, that is invaluable.”
“I hope as part of that they’re going to use some of the money to better resource the part of the ATO that deals with setting funds up because it does take an awfully long time” to set an SMSF up.
The changes significantly increase the regulatory duties of the ATO, said Peter Burgess, the chief executive of the SMSF Association.
“We don’t want a regime where the ATO is investigating people’s investment strategies,” he said.
‘The devil would be in the detail’
As far as the veto power goes, Burgess said the ATO would presumably have to have a good reason to prevent a rollover into an SMSF.
“The devil would be in the detail on that,” he said.
Mulino also confirmed that SMSFs would be required to contribute to future special levies to support the funding of the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort, along with larger super funds that are regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
“Individual SMSFs are likely to contribute no more than $20 per leviable period, which is an overall sector levy scaled according to the relative size of SMSF population assets compared to APRA-regulated sector assets,” Mulino said.
“They are also part of the financial services ecosystem that benefits from the existence of a compensation framework.”
The fee will apply to all SMSFs, whether they have a financial adviser or not, meaning that many SMSFs will be hit with the fee even though they cannot access the CSLR.
“Alternative models, including excluding SMSFs from the scheme altogether, would have created significant gaps in consumer protection while adding complexity and administrative costs,” said Mulino.
