Super Scheme Smart

If you have your retirement savings in a Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF), you are the target of tax scheme promoters. These schemes claim that individuals can avoid tax by channeling money (inappropriately) through SMSF. The ATO has announced that each year they are discovering more aggressive and complex tax schemes and arrangements designed by promoters solely for the purpose of helping people avoid tax. As a result, they have launched ‘Project Super Scheme Smart’ in order to educate taxpayers and their advisers about these types of schemes. So how do you recognise a scheme?

These schemes have some common features, they:

• are artificially contrived with complex structures usually connecting with an existing or newly created SMSF

• involve a significant amount of paper shuffling

• are designed to give the taxpayer minimal or zero tax, or even a tax refund

• aim to give a present day tax benefit by adopting the arrangement

• invariably sound ‘too good to be true’, and as such they generally are.

How to check if you’ve been caught up in a scheme:

• Contact your accountant/financial advisor

• Contact the ATO or follow the below links for further information:

Super Scheme Smart: Individuals

Super Scheme Smart: Intermediaries