The exposure draft legislation, Treasury Laws Amendment (Measures for Consultation) Bill 2021: superannuation information for family law proceedings (the ‘Exposure Draft’, the ‘draft bill’) forming part of this consultation will provide for family law proceedings to access superannuation records held by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Presently, this information needs to be accessed via forms approved by the Principal Registrar of the Family Court of Australia – however, these can only be lodged with superannuation funds where it is known that a superannuation interest is held.

It is expected that the measures contained in the Exposure Draft will provide for much faster resolution of family law proceedings, with the benefit that, once approved by the Commissioner of Taxation, the ATO will provide the parties to Family Law proceedings with all details of superannuation interests held by the parties.

The Major Accounting Bodies welcome this measure which we expect will result in a reduction in the time it takes to complete family court proceedings.  This will help to make the process more efficient and less costly.  We expect for a small number of cases this proposed measure will lead to significantly less cost.

CA ANZ and CPA Australia noted that superannuation information held by the ATO can suffer from latency issues.