Because of the financial impacts of COVID-19, trustees of a self managed superannuation fund (SMSF), or a related party of the fund, may provide or accept certain types of relief, which may give rise to contraventions of the super laws. Some trustees may also have been stranded overseas because of travel bans, which can affect their fund’s residency status.
In recognition of these issues, the ATO is offering support and relief to SMSF trustees for the 2019–2020, 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 income years.
This generally includes not taking any compliance action against an SMSF and not requiring the SMSF auditor to report related contraventions in the following areas:
- where an SMSF trustee or a related party of the SMSF offered rental relief to a tenant due to COVID-19;
TIP: Temporary changes to a lease agreement for rental relief need to be properly documented, together with the reasons for those changes. A formal variation of the lease may need to be executed.
- where a plan to get the value of SMSF’s in-house asset holdings below 5% of the fund’s total assets couldn’t be executed in time because of COVID-19;
- where a fund offered loan repayment relief because the borrower was experiencing difficulty repaying the loan because of COVID-19;
- where a fund no longer satisfies the residency rules because the trustee/s were stranded overseas for an extended period; and
- where a fund has a limited recourse borrowing arrangement (LRBA) with a related party lender, and the lender offered COVID-19 loan repayment relief to the fund.
Trustees must properly document all of these sorts of relief and provide their approved SMSF auditor with evidence to support it for the purposes of the annual SMSF audit.