From 1 November, Your Future Your Super, a Government initiative to attach (or staple) employees to one superannuation fund takes effect, and will change the way you onboard new employees from that date. You may have already heard from the ATO and/or your payroll software provider about these changes.
What’s Super Stapling?
Super stapling addresses the common problem of employees holding multiple super accounts. Instead, under the Your Future Your Super reforms, employees will have a stapled account that follows them as they change jobs. It is expected that these reforms will lead to less account duplication, lower fees, and a positive impact on future super balances.
What’s Changing?
Up until 1 November, a new employee either shares the details of their existing fund via the super choice form or they elect to use the default fund for your business.
From 1 November, there will soon be a third part to this process. With super stapling when a new employee starts and does not nominate a fund by completing a Superannuation Standard Choice form, employers (you) will then have to search for the employee’s stapled fund using ATO services (the new fancy name for the old Business Portal). Super stapling will mean adding an extra step in your onboarding process; this will be when you check for a new employee’s stapled account if (and only if) they haven’t nominated their own.
ATO Permissions
To make sure you’re ready to request stapled super fund details, you ll need to check and update the access levels of your authorised representatives in ATO online services. Specifically, you or any of your employees with access to your ATO system, will need to have the Employee Commencement Form permission in order to request stapled super fund details for new employees.
This can be done via ATO Online Services/Business Portal or going straight to the ATO Access Manager here. For both sites, you’ll need to log in with your MyGovID.
Once logged in, you ll need to select Manage Permissions, then check and select for all authorised representatives/users for your business and look for the Employee Commencement Form permission.
All authorised representatives will need permissions to View, Prepare and Lodge this form.
Requesting Stapled Super Fund details
You ll be able to request your employee’s stapled super fund after you have submitted a Tax file number declaration or Single Touch Payroll pay event linking you to them. There is no limit to the number of requests you can make.
To request a stapled super fund, you, or your authorised representative, need to:
- log into ATO online services.
- enter your employee’s details, including their:
- TFN
- full name including other given name if known
- date of birth
- address (if TFN not given).
- The ATO online system will use rules based on the regulations to work out and return a stapled super fund in response to a request.
You will receive the response on-screen. The ATO expects that you should be notified of the result of the stapled super fund request within minutes.
The ATO will notify your employee of the stapled super fund request and the fund details that the ATO provides to you.
Additionally, if the request was made on your behalf by an authorised representative, the ATO will notify you of the outcome of that request as well.
Unfortunately, as I’m sending you this email, the functionality within ATO Online Services (the Business Portal) isn t live to test or to confirm these steps.
Default Funds
At this point you might be asking, but what about default funds? Are they no longer a thing?
Default funds will still exist, and you’ll still need to have a default fund. Super stapling only affects new employees, so any current employee who already uses your default fund will stay the same. For new employees on or after 1 November, if the ATO advises that there is no stapled super fund for them, you will be able to make contributions to your default super fund (unless they fall under an EBA or award with a mandatory fund). This is more likely to occur for people who have never had super before, like young people entering the workforce or someone who has moved from overseas.
Remember that these changes only apply to new employees who do not nominate a superannuation fund via the Standard Choice form. For employees who do nominate a superannuation fund, you do not have to request the stapled super fund details from the ATO.
Got Questions?
If you have any questions on super stapling and what it means to you from 1 November, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
