On 11 April 2025, the Institute of Financial Professionals Australia (IFPA) lodged its submission on the payday super exposure draft legislation to address unpaid super. While IFPA supports the proposed change requiring employers to pay superannuation guarantee (SG) contributions at the same time as salary and wages, we believe amendments are needed to ensure its effective implementation.
IFPA has made seven key recommendations to improve the payday super regime, including:
- Exempt micro businesses from payday super, allowing them to continue as quarterly SG contributors.
- Move to a ‘pay date’ (ie, payment date) model for SG contributions rather than a ‘due date’ (ie, receipt date) model, with a 14-business day window to simplify compliance and reduce penalties due to delays caused by banks, clearing houses, or fund processing times.
- Regulate superannuation clearing houses so they are obligated to remit SG contributions on time.
- Introduce a standardised extended due date for SG payments in exceptional circumstances (eg, new employees, out of cycle payments, fund rejections, etc) to create certainty and reduce administrative confusion.
- Retain the SG statement option alongside the new voluntary disclosure model to give employers flexibility and reduce complexity.
- Simplify the SG opt-out process for employees with multiple employers by allowing exemption certificates to remain in effect until revoked.
- Allow SMSFs that are temporarily removed from Super Fund Lookup due to late lodgement to continue receiving SG contributions in one-off or minor cases.
Further details regarding our recommendations can be found in our submission and media release.