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Some house keeping to alert you all to  number of changes for SMSFs which apply for the 2012-2013 year. The most important to note are:

Section A: Item 6 has been changed from Fund Auditor to SMSF Auditor. An SMSF Auditor is a registered auditor under the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) who has been assigned an SMSF Auditor Number (SAN). From 1 July 2013, an auditor must be registered with ASIC in order to perform an SMSF Audit. In addition, Item 6 now requires that where a trustee reports that the auditor has qualified the audit due to a compliance issue, they also need to report whether the issue or issues have now been rectified.

Section A: Item 10 Exempt current pension income, now requires trustees to answer whether the fund paid an income stream to any of its members in the income year and, if so, to list the exempt current pension income amount and the method used to calculate it.

Section B: Item 11 Income, now includes a question on whether a trustee has applied an exemption or rollover in that year.

Section C: Item 12 has been renamed Deductions and non-deductible expenses, and includes additional labels.

Section D: Item 13 Calculation Statement, includes changes to the supervisory levy amount. The timing of the annual payment of the supervisory levy has been brought forward so that SMSFs pay the current year’s levy at the time of lodgement of the previous year’s annual return. This begins for the payment of the 2013-14 income year supervisory levy. However, the levy for this year is payable over two years, meaning SMSFs will pay half of the 2013-14 levy with the 2013 annual return, and the other half with the 2014 annual return.

There is also a new label for a supervisory levy adjustment for wound-up funds. This label is to be used only by funds that have wound up during the 2012-13 income year because they are not required to pay the supervisory levy for the 2013-14 income year.

Section F: Member information, now includes room for up to eight members to be listed in an SMSF (past and present, because an SMSF can only have four members at one time).

Section H: Item 15b Australian direct investments, now requires the value of each type of asset that is held under a limited recourse borrowing arrangement to be reported at the appropriate label. For example, Australian shares or Australian residential real property amounts would need to be reported here if bought under a current limited recourse borrowing arrangement. An amount reported in this area should not be reported again at any other asset labels in Section H.

New Item 15d, In-house assets (also in Section H), requires trustees to clarify whether the fund held a loan to, lease to, or investment, in related parties as at the end of the year, and well as the value of the assets.

Section J: Regulatory information has been removed from the SMSF annual return, streamlining SMSF reporting