Brett Evans

SMSFs, very popular with a lot of expats or a lot of Australian residents who become expats.

And we have this very grey space about central management and control.

You know, there's a narrative out there that talks about, I'm just going to appoint my brother or sister or father as the trustee of my trustee company and they're going to manage it while I live and work and play overseas.

It really ceases to become a self-managed super fund when you're the beneficiary and your brother is the trustee.

And the ATO has been taking a very dim view of these sort of situations.

The only time I've seen it really work truly well

is when that brother and sister maybe join their SMSFs together and the brother who's living in Australia manages it.

He has a larger portion of that joint account and he can manage it on behalf of the sister who's living overseas.

So now CMC, which is the most important part of a qualifying self-managed super fund is still in Australia.

Whereas a lot of people

They pay lip service to sitting on WhatsApp, telling their brother-in-law what to do via, you know, from Dubai or London or New York, you know, what to do with their accounts.

And if the ATO ever find out that fund is non-compliant and they'll lose 45% of the balance of the account in the first year.

And if they don't rectify it within 12 months, then they'll take another 45%.

So the ATO give you what we call the temporary absence rule, which is two years.

So for moving overseas, you've got two years virtually to wind it down.

and clean it up.

Either you amalgamate it with someone back in Australia or you wind it down, go to cash and go into a retail or a industry super fund.

No, you can't because that breaches the active members test.

So what we do in those sort of situations is we'll set up a separate retail super account, which you can contribute into and

And then when you move back to Australia, then you roll the retail super into an SMSF that you originally had.