When To Pay Your Super
There have been lots of changes to super payments for businesses recently. While the tax office didn’t focus on super for a long time, those days are over. In fact I am seeing clients of mine being audited and charged interest even if they are 1 day late for their super payments.
So here is what you need to know about paying your super contributions:
You can make payments as often as you like, for instance you can make monthly or even fortnightly payments if you wish. However, there are 4 key dates in which the full amount of super for that period needs to be paid. So if you pay monthly but the last month of that quarter is late then you can find yourself in trouble because the full amount for that quarter hasn’t been paid.
The key dates are as follows:
1 July – 30 September – due 28th October
1 October – 31 December – due 28th January
1 January – 31 March – due 28th April
1 April – 30 June – due 28 July
2. Other contractual requirements. The above dates are the requirements of the tax office, but you may find that other super funds, awards and contracts may require that super is paid more regularly. So you need to ensure that your practices are not only meeting the tax office requirements but also others that you may be contractually obliged to do.
3. Paying super got easier. The new super changes imposed the use of a clearing house. If you are using a cloud accounting software then you can have this set up so that it sends the paperwork and the payment directly to the super fund. It can be as easy as a couple of clicks on your cloud accounting software. However, you need to remember that it doesn’t happen automatically, you will still need to go into your superannuation section and create and authorise the payments.
4. Beware Salary Sacrifice. While you don’t need to pay your employer contribution till 28 July, this is not the case for salary sacrifice. If your employees are contributing to super through salary sacrifice and you wish to claim this in the current year, we recommend you consult with your tax accountant. With contribution limits reducing next year this may negatively impact on your employees.
If you have any questions about your employer super payments or would like help setting this up in your cloud accounting software then contact us
