“The ATO’s research is about trying to understand the behaviour of trustees that have been raiding the piggy bank before they're naturally entitled to, before preservation age,” Mr Dunn said.

“What the ATO is seeing now is people going through the process of taking money out and falling into some sort of voluntary disclosure, but they're getting caught in this process and the subsequent consequences of disqualification and taxation issues.”

He said until now the ATO has not tried to understand the behaviour behind these breaches and is undertaking research to “marry that up” with what it is also seeing regarding trustees’ lack of capability or understanding for managing their funds.

“The ATO is really trying to identify behaviours and trends that then might mitigate the risk of clients entering the superannuation system, and then ultimately taking that money out in an illegal form,” he said.

“You could argue that this is somewhat overdue by the ATO but it's an emerging issue for them to try and understand this further because, like anything, these sorts of areas become much more heightened through increased levels of money being taken.”

Mr Dunn said the regulator has indicated there are some funds with outstanding lodgments, which would infer there may be money that has been illegally accessed.

“But it could also be a case of money taken out in a legal sense, and the trustees never intended upholding their obligations in the first instance,” he said.

“The ATO is looking at new trustees who are entering the system, essentially with the sole intent of taking their retirement savings before they're meant to, so the idea is that these newly established SMSFs have received a rollover, but have not lodged their first annual return,” he said.

The ATO stated that 17 per cent of the 28,000 funds that were registered in 2022 have failed to lodge their first return and of those about 50 per cent appeared to have rolled money into their SMSF.

“That's a pretty considerable number of SMSFs that have been created with what appears to be from the ATO’s perspective at least, the sole purpose to access funds illegally,” Mr Dunn said.

“These are people that get through the net, and the ATO wants to determine if their actions have been deliberate or if they might have been subjected to some sort of scam and promotion.”

He added some of these funds may “have a clean bill of health historically”, but they've been “sold the snake oil”, and have done something without the level of knowledge and understanding of its implications.