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The Tax Office has announced 45 auditors of self-managed super funds were referred to ASIC during the 2023–24 financial year.
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ATO SMSF auditor referrals see slight uptick for FY23–24
10 September 2024
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The ATO has revealed 45 auditors of self-managed super funds (SMSF) were referred to ASIC for FY23–24, an increase from the previous financial year.
There was only a slight uptick in referrals, as the ATO referred 41 SMSF auditors to the corporate regulator in the previous financial year.
The ATO said a further 51 auditors chose to voluntarily deregister the commencement of ATO compliance activity.
“SMSF auditors play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of the SMSF system and the rate of referrals reflects how we continue utilising data to ramp up our compliance actions to address auditor behaviours which put the SMSF system at risk,” the ATO said.
According to the Tax Office, in-house audit reviews were a main area of focus for the year.
Over FY23–24, 11 auditors were referred to ASIC for failing to ensure that their specific arrangements complied with the independence standards as defined in APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants.
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The ATO said compliance work was also undertaken on auditors who had been in reciprocal audit arrangements and auditors who hadn’t undertaken any audits in the last five years.
Auditors who were at risk of not holding appropriate professional indemnity insurance or failed to complete the required continuing professional development were also focused on.
The breach of in-house audit independence requirements and failure to perform adequate checks were the main compliance issues identified by the ATO.
This also included the failure of gathering audit evidence for market valuations, existence of assets, trustee declaration, borrowings, and arm’s length transactions.
ASIC maintains a record of the banned and disqualified auditors of SMSFs that lists the name of the disqualified individuals, the industry they have been disqualified from, date of commencement, date of cessation, as well as the name of their organisation.
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