Canberra – 26 November 2009: Draft legislation enabling the creation of a superannuation clearing house for small business was released today for comment.

The clearing house is designed to reduce the compliance burden on small business created when employees were given the ability to choose which superannuation fund their employer contributions would be paid into.

The free clearing house service is available to businesses with less than 20 employees. Taking effect from 1 July 2010:

Employers will be able to register online to access the clearing house service.
Once registered, when a new employee is provided with the standard choice of fund form, the completed form is passed to the clearing house within 21 days of receipt from the employee (on or before the time of contribution). Where an employee has not selected a fund, the employer would notify the clearing house to use the employer’s default fund.
The employer pays all employee contributions directly to the clearing house by EFT by the due date;
The clearing house distributes the contributions to the employees nominated funds.

Registration for the clearing house will begin in May 2010.

Medicare will manage the administration of the clearing house (click here to read the announcement re Medicare).

The initiative was previously announced in the 2008/2009 Federal Budget.

More information:
Superannuation Clearing House - Exposure Draft of Legislation and Associated Explanatory Material
Superannuation clearing house – release of draft legislation