Speaking to SMSF Adviser, BDO national leader or superannuation Shirley Schaefer said up until the recent reforms, when a fund was fully in pension phase, everything was tax free, so there was less concern about keeping cost base information about assets.
“Practitioners might have gotten a little blasé or not giving it due attention because it hasn’t been necessary to keep it in the past. But it could be vital now with the potential resetting of cost bases, and for trustees to work out whether they should or shouldn’t reset a cost base they actually need to work out what it was,” explained Ms Schaefer.
This can be particularly difficult if clients have changed accountants and the new accountant hasn’t been able to get hold of the original genuine cost base information.
“When it was entered into systems it may have been a case of well the fund is fully in pension phase, we’ll just put it down as a cost base, we don’t need to know when it was acquired etc. Clearly that’s more important now,” she said.
While there are a lot of accountants who do have this information anyway, there is a risk records may “not be up to scratch and clients could be disadvantaged on that basis”.
