Declaration of Trust over Land Sold, so No Personal Tax Liability

A taxpayer has been successful in obtaining a declaration from the Supreme Court of Western Australia that a valid trust had been created over a property he had originally bought in 1990 under his own name. The trust had been declared in favour of a family trust at the time of the land’s subdivision five years later. As a result, the Commissioner of Taxation could not argue that the taxpayer was personally liable for capital gains tax on one of the lots sold in 2006. Instead, the profit had been included in the family trust’s tax return in that year and had been offset by the trust’s carried forward losses.