It Depends – Does my trust deed need to be updated?

In this edition of ‘It depends’, senior associate Keeghan Silcock talks about whether your trust deed needs to be updated.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, and welcome to another edition of It Depends. Today, I’m going to be talking about whether your trust deed needs to be updated.

What are some tax reasons for updating a trust deed?

Firstly, your trust deed may need to be updated for a number of different tax reasons. Some of these common tax reasons include; making sure that the definition of income is appropriate and that the trustee has as broad of flexibility as possible when determining income. We also like to check that the trustee has appropriate streaming powers, and this is something that came into play after 2011. So, commonly we see trust deeds that were prepared before 2011 do need to be updated to include those powers. We like to remove 30 June deadlines, and there are a number of all the tax provisions that we’ll often go in and tinker with to make sure that the trust deed reflects various changes that have happened in relation to the law regarding the taxation of trusts over the last few years.

What are some non-tax reasons for updating a trust deed?

There are also some common non-tax reasons why you might want to update your trust deed. This includes checking the beneficiaries of the trust, making sure that the provisions dealing with the appointment of the trustee are appropriate, and in particular, reflect how your client wants the succession of that trust to pass.

If you would like to know whether your client’s trust deed should be updated, or would like us to go in and do that work, please feel free to contact a member of our team.