By Daniel Butler, Director, DBA Lawyers A unit trust is a popular structure to hold property and other investments. This article examines numerous methods how an SMSF may invest in a unit trust. Multiple unitholders Many publicly offered managed investment funds are structured as a unit trust to allow multiple investors to invest in a [read more]
Daniel Butler ([email protected]), Director and Bryce Figot ([email protected]), Special Counsel, DBA Lawyers Since the beginning of 2018, there have been many important changes for SMSF auditors. These changes also impact the rest of the SMSF industry. DBA Lawyers is now offering an SMSF Auditor’s Kit. Overview This kit provides a single licence for multi-use by one [read more]
By William Fettes,Senior Associate,([email protected]), DBA Lawyers The website for DBA Lawyers’ Annual Update Service has been updated with a number of improvements for subscribers, including a fully integrated user experience for those clients who are registered with DBA Online— our online ordering platform. This article sets out the numerous benefits and features of the service [read more]
Daniel Butler ([email protected]), Director, DBA Lawyers This article highlights the value of ordering unit trust documents from a law firm with the relevant expertise such as DBA Lawyers. DBA Lawyers has always focused on providing quality documents and solutions instead of competing with other document suppliers on pricing (especially non-qualified and non-expert suppliers). In the [read more]
Daniel Butler ([email protected]), Director, DBA Lawyers The new law pertaining to ‘ipso facto’ clauses came into operation on 1 July 2018. This article highlights the relevance of the new law for SMSFs. Note that the law in this area is complex and a detailed and careful analysis is required to properly understand how the new [read more]
By: Daniel Butler, Director ([email protected]), DBA Lawyers Most people by now may be aware of the non-resident capital gains tax withholding (‘Withholding Regime’), which applies to vendors disposing of certain taxable property. Broadly, the Withholding Regime was introduced to allow the Australian government to obtain tax in respect of foreign vendors. However, the Withholding Regime [read more]
By William Fettes ([email protected]), Senior Associate, DBA Lawyers The starting point at general law is that legal title to fund assets must generally be held in name of the current trustees of the fund. However, this is not always possible, eg, where an SMSF trustee is unable to hold legal title, and title is instead [read more]
Shaun Backhaus, Lawyer and Daniel Butler, Director, DBA Lawyers While there are a large number of cryptocurrencies in existence (currently over 1600), this article will focus on Bitcoin for simplicity. Our comments contained here may apply to other cryptocurrencies with the same characteristics as Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? As a very basic explanation, the Bitcoin [read more]
By Daniel Butler, Director, DBA Lawyers 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 [read more]
By Daniel Butler, Director, DBA Lawyers The ATO has released material saying that SMSF property developments can be considered tax avoidance schemes that are ‘too good to be true’. Within the program called ‘Super Scheme Smart’, the ATO aims to educate the public about SMSF strategies that concern it. The page, which can be accessed [read more]
