The government is likely to include SMSFs in the special levy imposed to fund the blow-out in the cost of claims before the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR), but will not charge each fund more than $60, the SMSF Association has stated.
The planned imposition of the levy was revealed last week by association chief executive Peter Burgess at the industry body’s Technical Summit 2026 in Sydney, where he detailed efforts to reduce the level of the impost and its duration.
“The conversation with Treasury and the [Financial Services] Minister [Daniel Mulino] has shifted from whether SMSFs should pay to how much they should pay,” Burgess told attendees at the event.
“We have talked with the government and said if we have to have a levy, it should be a flat levy on all funds.
“It should also be small and it should be in loose parity to what an average Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-regulated fund member is going to pay.
“There are almost 17 million APRA fund members and any levy spread across them is a very small number.
“We believe we have had some success in refocusing the government’s thinking about what is an appropriate levy to impose on SMSFs from $100 a fund to $50 a fund, but we are hoping it’s much less.”
As part of his presentation, he explained the government would use a waterfall model to fund CSLR claims and where they exceeded the cap for a relevant primary sector, the excess would flow to a “connected subsector” as part of the special levies that would apply, which in the 2027 financial year would be $170 million.
He added the cap for the financial advice sector was $20 million and since SMSFs may be considered a connected subsector, the special levy would apply to them.
“It could be up to $40 million that will be allocated to the SMSF sector as that is the cap,” he said, referencing figures in the government’s consultation paper.
“If you work that back, we have 670,000 SMSFs, so that is $60 a fund, but that is the maximum amount they can charge to SMSFs.”
He noted the levy was unlikely to be incurred by SMSFs until 2027 because legislation had to be changed to allow that to occur, but the association had called for it to be paid alongside the ATO levy and identified as a separate line item.
“We have been very strong on this. We don’t want to include it in the ATO levy because we know when that happens it will get wrapped up in what they charge,” he said.
“We want to identify it as a separate item so we can take it out when there is no need for it.”