Our super guarantee focus
We're committed to actively reducing non-compliance and improving willing participation by employers in the super guarantee (SG) system. We focus on reducing non-compliance in the following 3 ways.
Helping employers get it right
We offer support to make it as easy as possible for employers to understand and comply with their SG obligations. This includes face-to-face interactions, phone calls, webinars, website content, printed publications, social media and ATO communities.
At our tax professional open forums and small business conversations held across Australia, we focus on the importance of employers complying with their SG requirements. We remind employers about SG due dates and the consequences of not meeting their quarterly payment and reporting obligations.
To support employers in their crucial first 12 months of business, we provide education and services through our Guide to starting a businessExternal Link.
Our online tools to help employers get it right include:
- Super guarantee eligibility decision tool helps work out if SG is payable.
- Super guarantee charge statement and calculator tool helps complete SG charge statements.
- How to pay super explains how employers can pay super.
- Super guarantee employer obligations – online course is a short online course to improve understanding of obligations and charges.
We're helping small businesses and their advisers to better understand and manage their cash flow.
Helping employees understand their entitlements
Our activities are not limited to employers. We provide online super tools to make it easier for employees to understand and report unpaid SG. We also give employees visibility of contributions made to their super funds through ATO online services.
Tools for employees include:
- Am I entitled to super?
- Estimate my super
- Unpaid super from your employer gives you steps to follow if your employer is not paying your super correctly
- Report unpaid super contributions from my employer.
Correcting employers who don't get it right
We take the non-payment of SG seriously and have a focused compliance program. Our program provides enforcement action to change employer behaviour and recover unpaid SG.
We address non-compliance through:
- proactively reminding employers of their obligations and to pay on time
- reviewing employee notifications (complaints) about non-payment
- reminding employers via letters, emails and phone calls to check their obligations and lodge SG charge statements if they have not paid the full amounts on time and to the correct funds for their eligible employees
- data analysis to identify potentially non-compliant employers for ATO-initiated reviews and audits.
Employee notifications
We receive notifications from employees who believe their employers have not met their SG obligations.
Review and audits
Transparency of the SG system has been significantly improved for us and employees by:
- employers reporting through Single Touch Payroll
- reporting of contributions by super funds.
We use this information to detect non-compliance and implement preventative and corrective strategies when employers don't meet their obligations.
We analyse a range of ATO internal information on possible unpaid super guarantee and also obtain information from:
- super funds
- unions
- government agencies
- other third parties.
Compliance activities
Improved data matching by the ATO provides greater opportunities to identify employers who are not meeting their SG obligations. This enables us to better target compliance actions focusing on those with more egregious behaviours in a more real-time environment.
Where appropriate, we undertake compliance and debt recovery actions to ensure more employees receive their SG entitlements. In 2022–23, we:
- examined the records of over 14,000 employers to address non-compliance
- issued 80,000 reminder letters to employers at risk of not paying their employees' SG on time
- issued 54,000 prompts to employers who were high risk of paying late or not paying SG for their employees.
We also review compliance in conjunction with pay as you go (PAYG) withholding tax audits targeted across a range of industries, regional areas and individual circumstances.
The SG charge imposes nominal interest and an administrative charge on top of the SG shortfall. An additional charge can impose penalties of up to 200%.
Where employers don’t take action to meet their SG obligations, we use firmer action including Directions to pay, director penalty notices, issuing garnishee notices and progressing to legal action including winding up a business.
Additionally, we work across government to support and enhance our current compliance approaches.