In the context of social distancing and the ‘work-from-home’ culture COVID-19 has demanded, corporations have had to adapt their standard means of holding meetings and executing deeds. Accordingly, on 5 May 2020, Josh Frydenberg, made a determination under the new s 1362A of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (‘CA’) called the Corporations (Coronavirus Economic Response) [read more]
The long-standing position at common law has been the formality that a deed must be written on parchment, vellum or paper. Accordingly, it has been widely accepted that a deed cannot be made electronically. The first key change to this position was in 2018 when the New South Wales (‘NSW’) government amended the Conveyancing Act [read more]
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised various practical issues for SMSF trustees and members. Members may wish to make a binding death benefit nomination (‘BDBN’) but may be frustrated by the requirement to have two independent witnesses available as this can prove challenging, if not impossible or illegal, during these difficult and dangerous (COVID-19) times. To [read more]
Click here to provide your instructions Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense amount of financial stress on tenants, especially commercial tenants who have suffered a severe downturn in their businesses. As a result, many commercial tenants are approaching their landlords demanding a rent reduction and variation to their lease. Landlords may be willing, [read more]
Background The Australian Government’s coronavirus economic stimulus package includes several options for individuals to obtain access to money in the short-term if they are financially impacted by coronavirus. One option is to allow a member to access up to $20,000 of their superannuation benefits before ‘retirement’ or attaining age 65. In these uncertain times that [read more]
Minimum pension payments for the current financial year (ie, FY2020) and next financial year (FY2021) have been halved. This measure addresses concerns of the current market volatility and aims to provide SMSF trustees with discretion and flexibility to better manage their cash flows and retain assets that may have substantially decreased in value in recent [read more]
SMSFs that own property are facing the prospect of tenants falling behind in their rent payments and their other obligations under the lease due to the economic stress arising from COVID-19. Australian states and territories will put a six-month moratorium on evictions for both residential and commercial tenants during the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Scott [read more]
In recent months, we have seen a significant increase in succession planning queries and assignments where we have been asked to provide advice and/or documents, including binding death benefit nominations (‘BDBNs’), reversionary pensions, planning for control of an SMSF and implementing timely member exit strategies for those who may be left with a limited time [read more]
Monitoring all developments We have been busy assisting many clients on a range of legal, tax and SMSF issues arising from COVID-19. Our team are keeping up to date with developments and revising our services and documents to adapt to the fast pace of change. We therefore wanted to keep you up to date on [read more]
