Workers to share $588m superannuation payback
SOPHIE ELSWORTH
UNDERPAID workers will be handed back more than half a billion dollars in superannuation payments that they were dudded by their employers.
Australian Taxation Office figures released on Monday show about 24,000 employers have come forward and disclosed they would be giving back $588m of unpaid or underpaid superannuation to employees.
About 393,000 employees will benefit from the initiative, which will see the money paid directly into their super funds or, if they are no longer working, into their bank accounts.
Under the federal government’s superannuation guarantee amnesty, there was a one-off opportunity for employers to come forward in the past six months to the tax office and confess that they had incorrectly paid their workers.
Assistant Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology Minister Senator Jane Hume said the amnesty was “reuniting Australians with money that is rightfully theirs, making sure every dollar that is owed to workers goes back to them”.
“We know that in the past calculating the super guarantee has been very complicated,” she said.
“The superannuation prompted honest amnesty businesses to take a look back through their records and check they’d done the right thing by their employees.”
The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees’ head of advocacy, Melissa Birks, said while it was good to see workers reunited with their money, the amount paid was “a drop in the ocean”.