Changes to ATO Super Clearing House

Superstream was introduced from 1 July 2016 and requires all super payments and employee information to be transmitted electronically in a standard format between employers, funds, service providers and the ATO.

The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH) was introduced to assist small business comply with Superstream. It is a free service you can use if you are a business with 19 or fewer employees, or have an annual aggregated turnover of less than $10 million.

You can make your super guarantee (SG) contributions as a single electronic payment to the SBSCH. It will then distribute the payments to each employee’s super fund.

From 26 February 2018, the SBSCH will only be available through the ATO Business Portal via ATO Online services.  If you use another clearing house or another form of reporting such as that provided by your accounting or payroll software provider, then this change won’t affect you.

This means that in order to process the payments and to provide the necessary information to the ATO regarding your employees’ super through the SBSCH, your options are now:

  1. Set up a My Gov account (if you don’t already have one) and link your business to government online business services such as the ATO Business Portal through “Manage ABN Connections” on your MyGov account – this is not our preferred option as once you set up the link, it means that we will not receive any correspondence from the ATO on your behalf or be kept informed that you have received any correspondence including any assessment notices, BASs or quarterly instalment notices. This therefore makes it more difficult for us to ensure that you meet your tax and other obligations on time.
  2. for AUSkey which will allow you to access the ATO Business Portal. You will need to register for an Administrator AUSkey and install the AUSkey software on your computer. This is more appropriate to those users that are confident in installing the download (we can also assist you with this) and those employers with multiple employees. We will still receive correspondence on your behalf and will also be able to access the business portal as usual as your tax agent. This option is not available to sole traders who have employees (only Option 1 is available to sole traders).
  3. If you use Xero and your subscription provides the “Äutomated Superannuation” option (for monthly subscriptions $60 and above), then you may wish to register for this service and process your payments through Xero and their third party super clearing house, if you aren’t doing so already.
  4. If you are a MYOB or Reckon user then, depending on your subscription, you may be able to process your payments through the MYOB Super Portal or Reckon Superstream.
  5. As tax agents we can access the ATO Super Clearing House through our tax agent portal and therefore we will be able to process payment details for employers on your behalf each quarter and then provide you with a payment slip to make the payment. This option is more likely to suit those with a small number of employees.

Please also note that as part of these changes the SBSCH bank account details have changed. The new details are available on the Payment Options screen when completing a Payment Instruction – therefore please update any saved BPAY payment references in your internet banking or other banking services.

Please let us know asap if you require our assistance in either downloading your AUSkey or processing your payments through the tax agent portal.

If you have any questions or require assistance please contact us asap on (08) 9754 4144 so that we can ensure that you meet your superannuation obligations on time.