Want to ensure you follow ATO rules for new employees and contractors and paying to their correct super fund? Read below, as the rules no longer mean you can simply choose the super fund if the employee or contractor doesn’t provide you with their super fund details.
Extra step added
Previously, if your new employee or contractor didn’t nominate their super fund, you were able to nominate a fund for them. Now you are required to check if the employee or contractor already has a super fund by contacting the ATO. If a super fund already exists, you are required to use this existing fund which is known as a ‘stapled super fund’.
If there’s no employee-nominated or stapled super fund, you must nominate the super fund.
Note that before you can request stapled super fund details, you need to have offered your employee or contractor a choice of super fund and provide a Superannuation standard choice form within 28 days of their start date. See this link for details.
Steps to requesting stapled super fund details
To request the stapled super fund details for your employee, follow the steps below.
Step 1. Submit a Tax file number declaration or Single Touch Payroll (STP) pay event, which identifies that you have an employment relationship or link to your employee.
Step 2. Apply online through ATO online services
- Log into ATO Online Services for Business.
- Navigate to the ‘Employee super account’ screen via the ‘Employees’ menu and select ‘Request’ to open the form.
- Enter your employee’s details, including their:
- TFN – an exemption code can be entered where an employee can’t provide their TFN, but this could result in processing delays
- full name, including ‘other given name’ if known
- date of birth
- address (residential or postal), if TFN not given.
- Read and click the declaration to sign it. You can tick a box under ‘more employees to request?’ to request stapled super fund details for additional employees.
- Submit your request.
Registered Tax or BAS agents can also complete this for you in Online Services for Agents.
You should be notified of the result of the stapled super fund request (on-screen) within minutes. The ATO also notifies your employee of the stapled super fund request and the fund details we provided.
Employing contractors entitled to SG contributions
Your contractors might not be included in your STP pay events, which means you will not have an employment relationship with them in the ATO system and hence can’t use the process listed above to request details of an existing super fund.
In this case, you need to request a contractor’s stapled super fund details using the secure mail function in ATO online services.
When you submit the request, you need to include:
- Topic: Superannuation
- Subject: Other
- Description: include reference to ‘Stapled super fund request for contractor’
- Attachments
- the written contract signed by both parties for the contracting arrangement
- a completed and signed Contractor stapled super fund request form.
This process may require you to ensure there is a written, signed contracting agreement in place.
Super fund choice and awards and enterprise agreements
Employers should check their modern award or enterprise agreement for extra rules about default funds. Most awards set out a list of super funds from which an employer is required to nominate a default fund. However, if there’s no chosen fund, an employer should pay into a stapled super fund if one exists, even if that fund is not listed in an applicable award or enterprise agreement.