SMSF Lease Review Service

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense amount of financial stress for tenants, especially commercial tenants, who have suffered a severe downturn in their businesses. As a result, many tenants are approaching their landlords demanding a rent reduction and variation to their lease.

If a landlord is an SMSF trustee and the tenant is a related party, non-compliance with superannuation legislation could give rise to extra costs and potential exposure to substantial penalties. DBA Lawyers is well placed to work with you and/or your advisers to tailor an optimal solution during these difficult times.

DBA Lawyers can help

We can assist SMSF trustees, tenants and their advisers to navigate the legal, tax and commercial issues including:

• Providing guidance and advice on the available options and the best way to proceed with a document variation.
• Undertaking appropriate due diligence on relevant matters to ensure the key issues have been considered to minimise the risk of subsequent queries arising from SMSF auditors (giving rise to an auditor contravention report or an ATO audit).
• ‘Stress testing’ any evidence for arm’s length (benchmark) testing and preparing appropriate documents to provide evidence including relevant trustee resolutions.
• Once the terms and conditions of any lease variation are agreed upon, we can assist with obtaining a variation to a lease. You may want to instruct us to work with your existing property/leasing lawyer or real estate agent. Note that any legal work should only be undertaken by a qualified lawyer.
• We can also review any lease variation or related documents to ensure compliance with superannuation and tax law and provide any written advice that is needed that will be subject to legal professional privilege.

If you wish to proceed, please complete the SMSF Lease Review Service order form (click here) and return it together with the documents requested therein. Alternatively, please contact us if you would prefer to discuss how we may assist.

Once we confirm your needs and the background details including current documentation, we can provide a fee proposal for your prior approval.

Before entering into a rent variation agreement, it is also essential that each SMSF landlord carefully considers a range of issues and we can help identify issues that may arise relevant to your case. To learn more about these issues, click here.

For more information and related articles

For more information, click on the articles listed below:

• SMSF Lease Review Service- COVID-19
• SMSFs and rent relief due to COVID-19