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Taxation, Trusts Daniel Smedley Taxation, Trusts Daniel Smedley

HOW FAR CAN A SPLIT TRUST BE SPLIT?

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) sought to address this question through a public determination (first issued in draft as TD 2018/D3) that considered a range of features of an arrangement, that when considered together, were deemed to have resulted in the creation of a new trust over assets formerly held by an original trust.

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Trusts, Sladen Snippet Magdalena Njokos Trusts, Sladen Snippet Magdalena Njokos

Sladen Snippet - Government introduces Bill on the taxation of testamentary trusts

The Federal Government has introduced the Treasury Laws Amendment (2019 Measures No. 3) Bill 2019 (Bill), which seeks to ensure that tax concessions available to minors on income on distributions by the trustee of a testamentary trust will only apply in respect of income that is generated from assets of the deceased estate transferred to that testamentary trust (or the proceeds of the disposal or investment of those assets).

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Sladen Snippet, State Taxes, Trusts Phil Broderick Sladen Snippet, State Taxes, Trusts Phil Broderick

Sladen snippet – does your discretionary trust hold residential land in NSW? If so, you may need to amend its deed by 31 December 2019

As outlined in our previous article, under the proposed changes to New South Wales land tax and duty legislation, a trustee of a discretionary trust (including testamentary trusts) will be deemed to be a “foreign trust” if the terms of the trust do not prevent a foreign person from being a beneficiary of the discretionary trust. Importantly, these changes are proposed to have retrospective effect to the 2017, 2018 and 2019 land tax years and can catch dutiable transactions back to 21 June 2016.

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Sladen Snippet - Further ATO Guidance on what is love and affection

On 6 February 2019, and as previously reported here, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) withdrew its longstanding public guidance that a company could forgive a debt for “natural love and affection” under the exception in the commercial debt forgiveness rules (CDF Rules) in Division 245. At that time, the ATO said it is developing guidance on the issue.

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