Trust return preparation 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.

Prepared for your registered tax agent; distribution resolutions are the trustee’s, on advice.

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 return preparation — 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 return preparation sits inside tax filings, alongside Individual tax return preparation, Sole trader return preparation, Partnership return preparation. Most clients end up buying the category as a whole rather than one leaf at a time, but starting narrow is fine.

No. A trust lodges an informational return declaring its income and a distribution statement; the tax is paid by whoever the income actually goes to — a beneficiary on their own return, or the trustee at the top marginal rate on anything not effectively distributed by 30 June. We reconcile the trust's accounts and prepare that distribution statement for your registered tax agent to review and lodge.

Generally by 30 June, inside the financial year the income relates to. A resolution written up after the year has closed, describing what was 'decided,' doesn't satisfy the requirement — income without a valid resolution by that date can end up taxed to the trustee at the top rate instead. We flag the deadline on your calendar well ahead of year-end.

No, and that's a common mix-up. The trust tax return goes to the ATO. The AIS goes to the ACNC, only applies if the entity is a registered charity, and runs on its own six-month-after-year-end clock. A charity that's income-tax exempt generally doesn't also lodge a separate trust or company return — the AIS is what verifies its ongoing exemption instead.

Six months after the charity's financial year-end. For the common 30 June balance date, that's 31 December. A charity on a different year-end gets six months from its own date instead.

We prepare the reconciled file — the income and expense reconciliation, the distribution statement matched to the trustee's resolution. Your registered tax agent reviews, signs and lodges it, and advises on anything touching exempt status or distribution position where that advice is a tax agent service.

We prepare the AIS form's content — operational and financial data organised by your charity's size tier. Submission goes through the ACNC portal by your charity's own registered responsible person, since ACNC portal access is tied to the charity's registered contacts, not to us.

Whatever isn't effectively distributed by that date is generally taxed to the trustee at the top individual marginal rate, not at any individual beneficiary's own rate. We flag income that looks likely to fall outside a valid distribution before the year closes, so the trustee has time to act on their agent's advice.

Size tier — small, medium or large — is set against the ACNC's own revenue thresholds and decides whether cash or accrual reporting applies and whether an Annual Financial Report has to be attached to the AIS. We confirm the tier at the start of the year, not in the run-up to the December deadline, so any required financial report is built in time.

Yes. The deed's distribution clause can restrict which classes of income go to which beneficiaries, and a resolution that goes beyond what the deed allows can fail. We check the resolution being prepared against the deed before it goes to the trustee for signature.

A registered charity lodges the ACNC AIS and, if exempt, generally skips a separate income tax return. An unregistered not-for-profit sits outside that regime and may instead need to self-assess its exemption through an annual NFP self-review return. We confirm which regime applies before preparing the file, so the right document gets built.

Yes, in the same way it does for a company return — self-lodgment is due 31 October, and agent-lodged returns get an extension under the registered agent lodgment program, provided the entity is added to the agent's client list before 31 October. Missing that add-by date forfeits the extension.