Recently the ATO’s Acting Assistant Commissioner for Superannuation, Steve Keating, outlined the ATO’s current approach to dealing with SMSFs facing compliance issues and making voluntary disclosures. The ATO has recognised that many Australians are experiencing financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and therefore it is not pursuing its usual audit program. For [read more]
Broadly, foreign purchaser duty surcharge of 7% to 8% applies on top of the normal duty impost (typically between 5% to 6%) where a discretionary trust acquires relevant real estate and the trust is deemed to be a ‘foreign trust’ in the relevant jurisdiction. For simplicity, we refer to ‘discretionary trusts with foreign beneficiaries’ that [read more]
The changes In the past few years, various jurisdictions in Australia have introduced legislation to impose duty and land tax surcharges on foreign persons, trusts and companies that purchase or hold certain types of real estate. The State Revenue Legislation Further Amendment Bill 2020 (NSW), which became law on 24 June 2020, contains amendments relating [read more]
DBA Lawyers provides the best SMSF governing rules and related documents, with numerous value-added features. This article briefly explains why our SMSF documents are the best available. Recent changes to DBA Lawyers’ SMSF governing rules Our latest DBA Lawyers’ SMSF governing rules (version 2020/21) comes with the following upgrades: enhanced binding death benefit nomination (‘BDBN’) [read more]
The Victorian Court of Appeal recently handed down Wareham v Marsella [2020] VSCA 92. This judgement represents the appeal of Marsella v Wareham (No 2) [2019] VSC 65. You can read our article about Wareham v Marsella here. Many have questioned why the outcome in Wareham v Marsella is so different to Katz v Grossman [read more]
The consequences of an SMSF failing the residency rules can be automatic non-complying status. This will broadly mean the entire amount of the SMSF’s assets, less non-concessional contributions, are taxed at 45% in the year of non-compliance (47% during temporary budget repair levy financial years of 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17). The result of this is [read more]
Introduction Real estate is a common and popular investment for SMSFs. Indeed, the ATO’s SMSF statistical report for the quarter ended 30 September 2019 shows that SMSFs held around $35 billion in residential real property and around $64.6 billion in non-residential property, ie, around $99.6 billion worth of real property. It is also reasonably popular [read more]
Since the foreign purchaser duty surcharge was first introduced in Victoria in 2015, it has been introduced in NSW, Tasmania, WA and SA (and only in respect of land tax in the ACT). The various changes in law and administrative practice in these jurisdictions, has made this a challenging area of law. In particular, the [read more]
Introduction Unit trusts are a common investment structure in Australia and can provide a simple way for parties to invest in an investment or business together. In particular, investing via a unit trust is a popular way for SMSFs to gain real estate exposure and is often used where real estate is being developed. While [read more]
By Daniel Butler ([email protected]), Director and Shaun Backhaus, ([email protected]), Lawyer, DBA Lawyers Upcoming changes There are currently changes before the NSW Parliament which, if passed into law, will have an impact for any discretionary trust that holds residential property in NSW. To minimise any risk, trustees and advisers should take action to be ready for [read more]
