With the passing of new legislation, in an effort to cut down on employees paying unnecessary fees on multiple superannuation accounts, employers will need to determine whether a new hire has an attached or ‘stapled’ superannuation account.

21 October 2021

In short, a stapled super fund is an existing super account which has been attached to or ‘stapled’ to an employee as they move from job to job. From 1 November 2021, employers will need to request such details from the ATO in the event that a new hire has not nominated a chosen superfund.

As a result of this change, employers must be aware that there may be an extra step involved in determining which super fund employee contributions need to be paid into when processing new hires. Current procedures dictate that when a new employee begins a new job, they nominate which super fund that their super guarantee contributions go to. If they do not nominate a fund their super contributions will be paid into the employer’s default fund. After 1 November, if a new employee does not nominate a super fund, employers may be required to request the new employees ‘stapled super fund’ details from the ATO.

In order to be prepared for these coming changes, your business should check in with ATO online services to confirm that you have the required access levels. If your business does not have the required access, you will need to have the ‘Employee Commencement Form’ permission to request a stapled fund. In most cases, the request for a new employees stapled fund can be made after submitting a TFN declaration or a Single Touch Payroll pay event that links the new hire to your business.

Once the request has been lodged through the portal, the ATO will notify the employee in question of the staple fund request and the fund details provided. If the resulting stapled fund cannot accept new contributions from the employee, employers will need to make another request for the employee’s stapled super fund through the online portal.

Large businesses that have over 100 new employees commencing at the same time are able to make a bulk stapled fund request to the ATO. These will need to be in a particular format and can be made through the secure mail function within online services for businesses and can take up to 5 business days to process.