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Few structures are as widely used but as little understood as trusts, especially when it comes to the potential tax consequences which can arise where they are misused. A trust is basically a structure which allows a person or company to hold an asset for the benefit of others. The person who controls the asset is the trustees and those who benefit are the beneficiaries. The assets held in a trust can vary property, shares, businesses and business premises are all commonly held in trust structures. The creator of the trust (the settler sets out the specific rules as to how these assets should be managed in a document called the trust deed.
By putting assets in a trust, you don't own the assets in your name. The assets are legally controlled by the trustee. However, you can potentially control exactly how those assets are managed now and in the future. You have the power to set out who receives the income arising from the assets and when they receive it, as well as who receives the underlying capital represented by the assets themselves and when. Discretionary Trusts (sometimes known as Family Trusts) are the most common type of trust used by business owners in Australia. They are generally created to hold a family's assets and/or business so as to protect those assets and to facilitate tax planning for family members.
From a tax perspective, the main advantage is that any income generated by the trust from business activities and investments, including capital gains can be distributed to beneficiaries in lower tax brackets (often spouses or children). Because the trustees of the trust have the discretion to distribute income and capital as they see fit and no beneficiary has a fixed entitlement to receive anything the trustees are able to stream income in a tax effective way on a year to year basis. The downside is that to the extent that they don't distribute the income of the trust, the trustees themselves are liable to tax on the undistributed income and a rate of tax usually higher than the beneficiaries themselves would have to pay. Note also that there are limited circumstances when the trustee has to pay tax on behalf of certain beneficiaries, the most common ones being where beneficiaries are children under the age of 18 or people with certain disabilities.
In most cases, from an asset protection perspective, assets held in a family trust cannot be attacked by creditors or lawsuits so they are ideal for protecting assets from business or personal disputes and they can also facilitate the transfer of assets from generation to generation tax free.
The problem with trusts is that they have become in the minds of the ATO at least synonymous with tax avoidance, particularly where they are used by the highly wealthy. The perception has grown that trusts are increasingly being used to hide income altogether, to conceal the underlying ownership of assets and to facilitate transfers of funds tax free between family and business groups through mechanisms such as interest free loans.
To combat this perceived tax risk, a couple of years ago the ATO announced the creation of a special Trusts Taskforce, given the job of looking into non-compliance amongst the millions of trust structures in place. Amongst the areas the taskforce will be looking at are the following:
Well, if you have substantial personal and/or business assets and have never considered setting up a trust for the benefit of your family, there is plenty to be gained by talking to your tax adviser or lawyer about the pros and cons. If you already have a trust structure in place, now is probably the time to do some due diligence look at what you've got, how you're used that structure and consider the motives behind your planning, talk to your advisers and get their sign-off that nothing you've done is likely to fall foul of the ATO.
Visit Tax and Business Services for more information and help to set up or use a trust.
Read more about which business structure should you choose.
July 2016
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