Over recent years there have been a number of cases on trust law and fundamental principles.  Some solutions to some questions have been raised, but the Australian Taxation Office has raised other issues.

Whilst the review of fundamental principles of trusts is still underway, there have been some fixes to deal with capital gains and imputation credits by trusts.

These new provisions provide a structured framework to satisfy tax law and can be extremely complex in implementation.

On the other hand, a simple vanilla trust without capital gains and imputation credits could well be simpler from a tax perspective than it was several years ago.

The legislation, the understanding, the complexity and the multitude of obligations and reporting for simple vanilla trusts, will inevitability mean that the cost of administration will increase quite significantly.

Whilst the benefits still remain from a tax sharing for the current year, in future the benefits will diminish and unfortunately the cost will increase.