I have written over the past few year or so about the upcoming need to pay superfund contributions via superstream. Now the deadline has arrived for small businesses. It’s compulsory from 1 July 2016.

Therefore the April super payments are the last time you can pay super contributions for your employees (or yourself) using cheques, Bpay or EFT transfers direct to superfunds. You must use an electronic clearing house.

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If you are an employer and have not already done so, you need to open an account with a clearing house, you add your employees and their superfund details.

Each quarter you logon and enter the super payable for each employee. The clearing house debits your business account with the total amount due, distributes it to the various employee superfunds and reports to the ATO.

Click here  to register with the free ATO clearing house

Of course one of the reasons for implementing this compulsory system is that the ATO can tell when you pay your employees super, so we can expect fines to be incurred if super is paid late or not paid at all. This will be the case even if it is your company paying your super, so beware those of you contracting through a company – you must pay your super on time.

The process is pretty simple, but of course if you need help setting yourself up please get in touch.

The only exemption is for super contributions paid from your personal business to your personal SMSF.

Lindsay