The ATO’s Stricter Approach to Late Super Payments

If you are an employer, you would be aware of your important responsibility you have on ensuring your employee’s super payments are paid on time and in full. Of late, we have noticed that the ATO is taking a stricter approach to late paid super; clients have been penalised, even if the payment was made before the due but wasn’t received until after the due date because of processing times.

Below are some tips that we would recommend you follow to avoid ATO action:

• Funds must be received by the employee’s fund on or before the quarterly due date – this means that you need to ensure you leave time for the payment to process before the due date. Payments made on the due date may not make it to the fund in time.
• You can make payments fortnightly or monthly to your employees, but the total super guarantee (SG) contribution for the quarter needs to be paid by the quarterly due date. Due dates are as follows:

• If your super is processed by HQB, we will process and ask you to make payment for the super guarantee a few days before this due date to accommodate for payment processing times.
• If you do make a late payment, you will need to lodge a Super Guarantee Charge (SGC) Statement. The sooner you do this the better, as interest is calculated for each day until the SGC statement is submitted.

If you need assistance with processing your super or submitting a super guarantee charge statement, please get in touch with our office.

– Nicola Dawson

Posted 04.09.2023

This article is compiled as a helpful guide for your private information and is subject to copyright. We suggest that you do not act solely on the basis of material contained in this article because items are of general nature only and may be liable to misinterpretation in particular circumstances. We recommend that our advice be sought before acting on any of these crucial areas.