Managing the Taxing Issue of Trusts: Challenges in Practice – a recorded lunchtime online conference

Duration: Approximately 2.5 Hours

Hear from the experts at this online conference. You can watch it on your computer or on your portable electronic device from anywhere.

The conference will be based on our highly successful video webinar technology: there'll be a chairperson and presentations.

One registration can be shared by colleagues within the same firm utilising the same login.

THE PROGRAM

Session 1: Trust Distributions: Timing and Content

The importance of correctly documenting a trust’s distribution of income and/or capital cannot be overstated. Getting it wrong can trigger tax to the trustee at the top marginal rate, with no entitlement to the CGT 50% discount concessions. This session looks at the timing requirements and issues to consider when making a trustee distribution resolution to assist in ensuring the desired tax outcomes are achieved, including:

• Tax effective timing deadlines
• Trust deed definitions of trust income
• Family trust elections, interposed entity elections and family group considerations
• Tax effective streaming of franked dividends and capital gains
• Distributions that include the small business CGT concessions, including:

• monitoring the significant individual test and small business participation percentage
• treatment of the non assessable portion of a capital gain to achieve the desired tax outcome

• Trust loss rules and the pattern of distribution test
• Why trustee resolutions can fail (Lewski v Commissioner of Taxation [2017] FCAFC 145 TD 2012/22 (update in progress))
• Practical examples

Session 2: Trusts and the Small Business CGT Concessions: Not as Clear Cut as you Think

The small business CGT concessions are complex, in no small part due to the way the rules apply to trusts. This session drills down on the concessions as they specifically apply to trusts, including:

• How the CGT concessions apply to discretionary trusts
• How the control test applies to:

• discretionary trusts
• unit trusts

• Unit trust selling business or premises where the unitholders are two family trusts – how are the concessions applied?
• What is the significant individual test?
• How the active asset 50% reduction can trigger CGT event E4 in a unit trust and strategies to deal with the issue
• What extra conditions need to be satisfied if the CGT asset is an interest in a trust?
• Case studies:

• Comparison of selling the CGT asset in a trust or selling the units
• Comparison of selling a CGT asset in a discretionary trust or a unit trust

Session 3: You Can Go Your Own Way: Trust Splitting

With an increasing amount of trusts being involved in the intergenerational transfer of wealth, strategies are required to unbundle that wealth to transfer control over to the next generation, This session delves into the tax implications that can arise from implementing trust splitting as one such strategy, including:

• What is trust splitting?
• Is a trust split a resettlement?
• Are there any CGT implications when entering into a trust split?
• How is a loss from assets controlled by one trustee treated if the assets controlled by the other trustee derives a surplus?
• Is a separate income tax return required for the income derived from each set of assets split from the original trust?
• What if the original trust has borrowings?
• Will family trust and interposed entity elections be affected by a trust split?
• Case studies