Posts from last year looked at the Clark decision. In
that case, the court held that significant changes to a trust instrument would
not of themselves cause a resettlement of the trust for tax purposes.
As mentioned in last week’s post, the Tax Office has now
released draft determination TD2012/D4 which provides some further clarity around
when the Tax Office will deem changes to a trust to amount to a capital gains
tax event under CGT events E1 and E2 (i.e. a resettlement).
In broad terms, the Tax Office states that unless variations
cause a trust to terminate, then there will be no resettlement for tax
purposes.
A number of examples are provided, which give some guidance
around issues such as changes of beneficiaries and update to address
distribution of trust income.
Unfortunately, the examples provided are not particularly
comprehensive and issues such as changing appointors and multiple changes (for
example, changing beneficiaries, the trustee and the appointor as part of an
estate planning exercise) are not specifically addressed.
This said, the draft determination should provide a level of
confidence that relatively significant changes to trust instruments can be made
without adverse tax consequences, although it remains necessary to also
consider the separate stamp duty and trust law implications of any such change.
A full copy of the draft determination is at the following
link – http://law.ato.gov.au/atolaw/view.htm?docid=%22DXT%2FTD2012D4%2FNAT%2FATO%2F00001%22
Until next week.
