This year's budget contains many issues that Chartered Accountants, especially those working in public practise, will need to be on top of to help their clients.

Further details about those changes can be found in our other budget articles.

Firstly, let’s look at some changes that do not apply to superannuation funds and other taxpayers:

Capital Gains Tax Changes

• Super funds with non-pension supporting assets will continue to receive a one third discount (it is worth remembering that superannuation funds have not had access to the pre-Sept ’85 concession since 1 July 1988).
• Age pensioners, and other means tested income support payments, will be exempt from the minimum CGT measure (however the new CGT calculation rules continue to apply).

Negative Gearing Changes

• Superannuation funds and widely held trusts will be able to apply gearing to all different types of assets.
• All individual taxpayers will be able to claim all gearing costs on other assets such as listed shares (the government has stated in this year’s budget papers that very few loans involve non-residential real estate).

Discretionary Trust Distributions

• All super funds face a 45 per cent tax on distributions from discretionary trusts – we expect that super funds will have access to the 30 per cent credit from discretionary trust distributions.
• Special disability trusts, deceased estates and charitable trusts will not be subject to the new minimum income tax measure.

Now let’s look at another measure – the Government will begin the task of strengthening the regulation of Managed Investment Schemes (MISs).

Almost $18m – most of which will be paid for via the ASIC Industry Funding Model – over the forward estimates to “to strengthen governance requirements, supervision and enforcement in relation to managed investment schemes". The measures include:

• Providing funding to ASIC to enhance its ability to utlise data in its supervision.
• Funding to the AUASB and ASIC to strengthen governance requirements for MISs.
• Consulting publicly on new data collection powers in relation to MISs.

These are welcome changes and CA ANZ has advocated in this area over several years.