- within Employment and HR topic(s)
- in United Kingdom
- within Law Department Performance, Wealth Management and Law Practice Management topic(s)
- with Senior Company Executives, HR and Inhouse Counsel
- with readers working within the Accounting & Consultancy and Law Firm industries
In this edition of It Depends, senior associate Keeghan Silcock explains when a company qualifies as a special purpose superannuation trustee company for the reduced annual ASIC renewal fee.
In this edition of It Depends, senior associate Keeghan Silcock explains when a company qualifies as a special purpose superannuation trustee company for the reduced annual ASIC renewal fee.
The company’s constitution must expressly prohibit distributing income or property to members, and the company must act solely as trustee of a regulated superannuation fund.
Video transcript
Hi, I’m Keeghan Silcock and welcome to another edition of It Depends.
Today I’ll be talking about whether my company qualifies as a special purpose superannuation trustee company.
So, it depends.
There are a couple of conditions that a company needs to satisfy in order to qualify for the reduced annual ASIC renewal fee as a special purpose trustee company.
Number one, the company’s constitution needs to prohibit any distribution of income or property to its members.
It’s important that these are express terms in the company constitution. If the constitution is not prepared with that wording, then it will not satisfy that condition and it will not qualify for the reduced annual ASIC fee.
The second requirement is that the company must only act solely in the capacity as the trustee for a regulated superannuation fund.
Now, a common way that we see that this test is failed is where you have a company acting as the trustee for an SMSF, so tick. It’s acting in the role as the trustee of a regulated superannuation fund. But then it’s also acting in another capacity, for example, as the trustee of another trust.
In that circumstance, it does not qualify. It does not satisfy that requirement of solely acting as the trustee of a regulated superannuation fund and in that case, should not be accessing that reduced annual ASIC fee.
We’ve also recently been getting a number of inquiries about whether the trustee companies of ancillary type SMSF structures, for example, limited recourse borrowing trusts qualify for the reduced fee.
Again, the answer is no. Even though in the case of an LRBA bare trust, the only beneficiary of that trust is the SMSF, the trustee of the bare trust is not acting solely as the trustee of a regulated superannuation fund. The bare trust is a different entity. So, in that case, it does not qualify for the reduced annual ASIC fee.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
[View Source]