The Federal Treasurer, Scott Morrison has ruled out the Government backing any moves to tighten the rules around family trusts.
Speaking on radio, Morrison said there was good reason for families to maintain trust structures, particularly those on the land, and the Government would not be coming after them.
“Small businesses use family trusts, it’s a pretty simple reason why you do it, because you have good news and you have bad news, you have a good year and you pay an amount in tax, and the next year, it’s a bad year, the weather has been unkind to you, and you are borrowing money to pay last year’s tax bill,” he said.
“You’ve also got, who owns the property at the end of the day and you want to keep it in the family. These are all legitimate reasons of why we have a trust scheme in this country and [opposition leader] Bill Shorten is coming after that.”
“We don’t agree with him [Shorten],” Morrison said.
