Monday, March 28, 2011

ATO Discussion Paper on buy-sell agreements

Following last week’s post, we had a number of people contact us in relation to the, withdrawn, ATO Discussion Paper on business succession arrangements (i.e. buy-sell agreements).

As mentioned in last week’s post, the ATO has unequivocally stated its belief that the Discussion Paper is not current and that advisers in this area should be deterred from relying on it.

This said, the Discussion Paper remains (even 11 years after its initial circulation) the only comprehensive attempt by the ATO to articulate its view of the various business succession models.

For those interested in the issues addressed by the Discussion Paper, please email me. 

Please note the copy of the paper I have access to is shown in 'marked up' format as this was the final version released by the ATO before it was withdrawn from circulation.

Until next week.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Insurance funded buy-sell arrangements - ATO commentary

A number of earlier posts have considered various taxation aspects of insurance funded buy-sell arrangements.

Some minutes recently released from the National Tax Liaison Group meeting towards the end of last year provide an interesting insight to the latest ATO views in this area.

For those who have not seen a full copy of the minutes and would like a copy please email me.

As you will see, in summary:

1. The status of taxation ruling on absolute entitlement (TR2004/D25) remains unclear.


2. The ATO considers its finalisation intricately linked to how it will deal with bare trusts, which again remains an unresolved issue.

3. The ATO confirms that the product ruling released last year in relation to one provider’s insurance trust arrangement is based entirely on the assumption that absolute entitlement was created. As my post from last year indicated, this assumption may be an unwise one to make given the ATO’s apparent attitude in this area.

4. While the ATO is flagging that they will further consider providing appropriate guidance, they have specifically confirmed that the Discussion Paper from 2000 on business succession arrangements cannot be considered current.
Until next week.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Do prenups actually work?

The above question was posed to me during the week and, unfortunately, when I was told to make my answer succinct, the only thing that easily came to mind was 'it depends'.

Many advisers will be aware that prenups (or as they are more technically termed in Australia 'binding financial agreements') have been available for around 10 years now.

There have been a number of changes to the way in which the rules in this area work and the most significant of these changes occurred towards the end of last year.

While there were a number of quite heavily publicised cases where what otherwise appeared to be binding agreements were held to be invalid, the changes made towards the end of last year have generally been seen to be positive steps to ensure that disgruntled spouses cannot extract themselves from previously made promises on the basis of a legal technicality.

Until next week.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Witnessing powers of attorney

Following last week’s post, I had a number of people raise concerns about the witnessing requirements for powers of attorney.

Unfortunately, this is yet another example of inconsistencies between each Australian state.

Certainly, in each state, legal practitioners are authorised witnesses for most forms of powers of attorney.

Having this said, documents that are directly related to medical issues can normally only be witnessed by a medical practitioner.

In some states, the financial related power of attorney documents can be witnessed by a relevantly large range of authorised signatories.

Ultimately, as I recommended to the advisers who contacted me, the safest pathway is to carefully read the relevant documentation to ensure all witnessing provisions are complied with. While there are numerous inconsistencies between the various states, each state does at least set out in some detail the witnessing requirement for each document as part of the standard government form.

Until next week.