Coronavirus: pause on early grab of super to be lifted

The Australian Taxation Office will resume processing applications for early access to superannuation on Monday.

Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton said said the pausing of the scheme was “prudent” and did not indicate there was an ongoing threat to anyone’s super. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Australian Taxation Office will restart processing applications for early access to superannuation on Monday, after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton confirmed “an element of fraud” was behind a decision to suspend the scheme on Friday.

More than 1.2 million Australians have applied to the Australian Taxation Office to withdraw up to $10,000 from their superannuation funds this year as part of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

However, the ATO on Friday temporarily stopped processing applications after the Australian Federal Police revealed that up to 150 people had lost $120,000 due to identity theft, after a tax agent had personal details of customers stolen by an online hacker.

Australians were still able on Friday to apply for the special COVID-19 hardship release.

Mr Dutton told Sky News that the AFP and other commonwealth agencies such as Austrac were investigating.

“They are looking at an instance where there has been one tax agent that has been the subject of a hacking or cyber attack, and personal details of clients that are part of that business, they have been exploited,” Mr Dutton said.

“There’s been no cyber intrusion within the superannuation funds or within the ATO.”

Mr Dutton said the pausing of the scheme was “prudent” and did not indicate there was an ongoing threat to anyone’s super.

“The AFP have really ramped up their engagement to make sure we can come down very heavily on those who would seek to rip off the funds of other taxpayers,” he said.

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar said Australians could still apply to the ATO to access their superannuation early, with the processing of applications paused for Friday only “out of an abundance of caution”.

“So we’re investigating those (breaches) … so today the ATO will pause requests for early superannuation being sent to super funds,” Mr Sukkar told Sky News.

“Just for today — so they’ll resume on Monday, because we want … out of an abundance of caution to make sure there’s nothing more we can do to help people protecting their data, to ensure that people are not the victims of identity theft.”