Accountants are best known for helping clients with their accounts, tax, compliance and reporting. Many also advise on decisions such as investments and business structure.
With self-managed super funds, accountants have traditionally helped their clients plan for retirement in several ways:
- Audit
- Financial advice
- Trustee services
- Fund tax
- Fund administration
- Fund accounting
Here is how each works today.
Audit
Every SMSF must be audited each year by an approved SMSF auditor. Since 1 July 2013, an SMSF auditor must be registered with ASIC, which gives each one an SMSF auditor number (SAN). The auditor must also be independent of the fund: an accountant who prepares a fund's accounts, or advises it, can't audit it.
Accounting
This is the groundwork for the fund's financial statements and member statements, done in SMSF accounting software such as BGL Simple Fund, BGL360 or Class Super.
Fund tax
The accountant prepares the SMSF annual return, which reports the fund's income tax and its regulatory and member details, and can lodge it as a registered tax agent once the audit is finished.
Trustee services
An accountant isn't normally a trustee of a client's SMSF. In an SMSF the members are the trustees, or directors of the trustee company. A small APRA fund, by contrast, has a licensed professional trustee.
Administration
The trustees are responsible for administering the fund, but the accountant often does much of the work for them and acts as the link between the trustees, the auditor and the ATO.
Financial advice
Advice on whether to set up an SMSF, or on what it should invest in, is financial product advice. Since 1 July 2016, an accountant needs an Australian financial services licence, or to be authorised under one, to give it.
If your firm prepares SMSF accounts and you'd like help with the preparation, see our packages and fees.