The Superannuation Guarantee Charge requires employers to pay
a certain percentage of employees’ salaries into a complying superannuation fund.
The latest Australian Tax Office analysis indicates that 92 per cent of employers are paying in the right amount and 99 per cent of employers are at least making some contributions.
The downside to the SGC is that, in a society that has a high turnover of jobs, employees may leave a job with little superannuation having been contributed on their behalf.
This balance is often reported to the lost members’ register run by the ATO. The register is updated twice a year and anyone who desires to find information about his or her superannuation balances can seek it from the ATO.
Recently, the ATO ran a pilot project to find ‘lost’ members with two funds – an industry fund and a large public sector fund.
The industry fund matched 6,000 participants on the lost members’ register and assigned over $5,000,000 in superannuation
payments to the rightful owners. The public sector fund made 1,600 matches with over $1,500,000 of superannuation correctly allocated.
It would seem that there is a fairly large amount of money in the lost members’ register.
It is a sad indictment of our apathetic attitude to our money that we would even allow this amount of money to disappear into the ether.
