From 1st July 2010, if you have 20 employees or less, you can access the Federal Government’s Clearing House for superannuation guarantee payments. This makes paying super so easy.
(NOTE: As of 1st April 2014, the Australian Taxation Office will run the clearinghouse. Read more about this in this blog).
The Clearing House is the result of a 2007 Federal Election promise. Currently, employees can nominate which super fund they wish you to pay into on their behalf. This may mean that you have to pay into several funds each month which can be time-consuming and costly if you outsource your payroll. The Clearing House relieves you of this burden and allows you to pay your employees’ super into one location – the ATO clearinghouse. Payment of your employees’ super contributions with the ATO immediately relieves you of your legal liability for payment of such super. The use of this facility is free of charge and you can register for this service with the ATO on their website now.
There has been a recent update to the blog above; from the website above:
“After receiving feedback on how we could improve the Small Business Superannuation Clearing Hous, we have made some changes to make the service easier to use.
Payment methods within the Clearing House:
The Clearing House now offers you an additional payment method to make your superannuation guarantee contributions. This new payment method is Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).
Payment via EFT will not replace the BPAY facility but does provide an additional payment method available for you to choose when paying contributions to the Clearing House. If you want to pay superannuation guarantee contributions directly via EFT, account details can be found on your contributions bill. When making a payment you must use the Clearing House BSB number together with your allocated account number. The account number is unique to your business and enables the Clearing House to match your payment amount with a payment instruction. When a successful match is made it will result in payments being distributed to the nominated superannuation fund/s. As with payments via BPAY, when making a payment via EFT you must transfer the exact total amount detailed in your payment instruction. If the amount deposited does not match, the Clearing House will not be able to allocate your payment and will refund the deposit back to your nominated bank account registered with the Clearing House.
Please Note: As a result of this enhancement, the next time you log on to the Clearing House you will be asked to accept the revised terms and conditions.
For more information, see the Quick Reference Guide: Making a Payment to the Clearing House
Employee Annual Statements:
You can now download an annual statement for your employees to show a history of successful payments that have been made to their nominated superannuation fund/s within a specific financial year. You can do this once you are logged into your employer’s main page via the instructions history tab.
