Anyone who has been in business more than the past half dozen years or so will remember the “good old days” when much of your annual tax planning, including determining your trust distributions, could be done at the time of preparation of your income tax returns.

Well, unfortunately, those days are gone.

Your trust distributions MUST now be determined, and documented, before midnight on the 30th of June!

If you miss that deadline, there is nothing you can do. Your Trust Deed default clauses will apply and/or your Trust itself will pay tax for the year.

The result is usually that all of the Trust’s income will be taxed at the top marginal rate. A disaster for pretty much any business owner or investor!

So usually we couple determination of our client’s annual Trust Distributions with their annual Year-End Tax Planning exercise.

But even if a Tax Planning exercise is not being undertaken, the Trust Distributions must still be determined and “locked in” before the end of the year.

Of course, the only way to be able to make an informed decision about year-end tax planning and your trust distributions is to have accurate, complete and up to date accounting records and interim business performance figures for the year (do you see a pattern emerging)!

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