Trust structure coordination for Australian businesses

A named person on our team owns your file and reviews everything that leaves it. Software does a real share of the grinding underneath it — coding, matching, flagging the obvious gaps — but nothing regulated happens without a person’s judgement, and nothing here is signed or filed by an algorithm.

The trust deed is drafted by an Australian lawyer; CapEasy project-manages the sequence and prepares the trustee-company registration and ABN/TFN applications around it.

Whatever you already run. Most commonly QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, Zoho Books and a handful of others — we work inside your system rather than moving you onto one of our own.

A short, free read-only look at what you already have, and a written note on what we found. A scoping call decides the size of the engagement — nothing here commits you to anything.

There is no published price for trust structure coordination — it depends on volume, how many entities are involved, and how far behind the books are. We quote after the read-only review, which is free.

Trust structure coordination sits inside company formation, alongside Pty Ltd company registration, Australian subsidiary of an Indian company, Sole trader setup. Most clients end up buying the category as a whole rather than one leaf at a time, but starting narrow is fine.

No. Drafting a bespoke trust deed is legal work in every Australian state. We prepare the facts brief — trust type, trustee, appointor, beneficiaries, vesting date — and your Australian lawyer drafts or reviews the deed itself, whether that's a fully bespoke document or a law-firm-backed template like Cleardocs.

Because the deed names its trustee by company name and ACN, that company has to legally exist first. We run the trustee Pty Ltd's ASIC registration (Form 201) as the first step in the sequence, and hand your lawyer the confirmed ACN before the deed drafting brief goes to them.

A discretionary (family) trust lets the trustee decide each year how income and capital are split among a class of beneficiaries — the flexibility that drives most of its tax-effective use. A unit trust gives beneficiaries fixed proportional units instead, which suits unrelated co-investors or situations needing fixed-interest tax treatment. We help you understand which shape fits what you've described; the actual tax-position call sits with a registered tax agent.

An individual can be trustee, and it's cheaper to set up, but it puts that person's personal assets behind the trust's liabilities. A corporate trustee — a Pty Ltd formed to hold the role — is why most advisors recommend it: it ring-fences trust liabilities inside a company that owns nothing itself. Which one you choose is a decision for you and your lawyer or accountant; we coordinate whichever path you land on.

No discount. A trustee Pty Ltd pays the standard $636 ASIC registration fee and the standard $342/yr annual review fee, same as any ordinary company. The reduced $70/yr special-purpose-company fee is restricted to companies acting solely as trustee of a self-managed super fund — it does not extend to a family or discretionary trust's corporate trustee, and we never quote it as a saving here.

The trust's own. Even though the corporate trustee has its own ACN and could theoretically have its own ABN as a company, for income-tax purposes the trust is the entity that matters, and it applies for its own ABN and TFN through the ABR. We keep the two clearly separated when we prepare the applications so the wrong number doesn't end up on a bank account or GST registration.

It depends on the state, and it varies — some states charge a modest fixed or ad-valorem amount, others charge close to nothing for a standard discretionary trust deed. Where duty applies, most states set a payment window after execution — for example, NSW requires payment within three months. We flag the relevant window as part of the coordination pack before the deed is signed, and confirm the actual amount with the state revenue office or your accountant rather than quoting a fixed figure ourselves.

It's the document the trustee records each financial year, by 30 June, setting out which beneficiaries receive what share of the trust's income and capital for that year. It's what makes the discretionary structure's tax-effective splitting actually work — without a properly recorded resolution, the ATO can treat the distribution differently than intended. We hand over a template and a 30 June reminder as part of the first year's handoff.

No — that's tax advice given for a fee, which under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 requires TPB (Tax Practitioners Board) registration. We prepare the facts and the mechanics; a registered tax agent or your accountant makes the actual distribution-strategy call.

An executed, appropriately stamped trust deed from your lawyer; the corporate trustee's ACN and ASIC Certificate of Registration, if you've used one; and the trust's own ABN and TFN. We organise and sequence every piece; the deed itself and any tax or legal sign-off sit with the licensed professionals involved.

The corporate trustee's ASIC registration is typically near-instant online. Deed drafting and execution timing depends on your lawyer's turnaround once the facts brief is with them — it's a private document, so it can be same-day once drafted. The trust's ABN/TFN usually issues within days of lodgement. We don't control your lawyer's drafting queue, so we don't promise a combined timeline — we do keep the sequence moving without gaps between steps.