About MTAS changes for tax agents
Tax agents will benefit from the MTAS program as we make changes that streamline processing and reduce lodgment errors that create reverse workflow.
We're working with your digital service providers to improve your lodgment experience and make it easier for both trustees and beneficiaries to comply.
By improving trust reporting requirements, we're making it easier for you and your clients to get it right.
What to expect in Tax Time 2026
New labels
When preparing your clients' tax return for 2025–26, you'll see 3 new labels in the statement of distribution section of the trust tax return:
- B1 Non-primary production managed investment scheme amount
- U2 Franked distribution related to investments amount
- H1 Other assessable foreign source income from a financial investment amount.
This is information you already provide individual beneficiaries to support the calculation of their Net financial investment loss at IT5 in their tax return. Including this in the statement of distribution will streamline that experience for both you and them.
Improved pre-lodgment validations
We're working with digital service providers to address common lodgment errors and ensure that consistent information has been provided with the return. Examples of checks include ensuring that beneficiary details are properly completed and align with the provided assessment calculation code in the statement of distribution.
Your digital service provider will let you know how these changes impact the software you're using, and how to resolve any errors before you can lodge the trust tax return.
These enhancements will prevent information being sent to us that delays the processing of trust tax returns.
Trust distribution pre-fill for individual beneficiaries
Statement of distribution data will be made available in pre-fill reports for individual beneficiaries from 1 July 2026. The data will become available in pre-fill once we have processed the trust's tax return and successfully matched the information to the individual beneficiary.
For tax agents who represent both the trust and beneficiaries, this change should not impact your current workflows when lodging the returns for the groups. Tax agents who don't prepare both the trust and beneficiary returns will benefit from receiving both the pre-fill and distribution statement and being able to reconcile the information for accuracy.
Pre-fill information should be reviewed against other information provided by the trustee. The most up-to-date information should be included in the trust income schedule with the beneficiary's tax return.
Lodging the trust tax return as early as possible will help reduce queries around missing distribution statements and the costs in managing those requests.
Coming up in Tax Time 2027
Further changes to the trust tax return for 2026–27 include additional labels for the statement of distribution and other reporting changes. These are aimed at streamlining the processing of trust returns and improving transparency.
You need to start preparing for upcoming changes now, to ensure your clients can report correctly and are meeting their obligations.
You should already be collecting much of this information. Increased reporting obligations will support you to get it right and allow us to focus compliance activities where we see the greatest risk.
Statement of distribution updates
Statement of distribution changes will include:
- reporting of unpaid present entitlements of beneficiaries
- reporting the rateable reductions applied when calculating franked distributions and capital gains amounts
- simpler reporting of non-resident beneficiary distributions of interest, unfranked dividends, royalties and associated tax withheld. This will remove the need to provide an additional information schedule with the trust tax return form.
There will also be layout changes to the paper trust tax return and trust income schedule to incorporate the new labels.
Family trust election and interposed entity election status reporting
We're improving the reporting requirements for family trust elections and interposed entity elections, by requiring the details of the specified individual named in these elections to be included in the trust tax return (where applicable). This increases visibility for the trustee and tax agent and should help prevent unintended consequences.
Announced but unenacted legislative changes to beneficiary reporting for closely held trusts
In the 2023–24 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), the government announced that it would amend the way that beneficiary tax file numbers (TFN) are reported by closely held trusts where they become entitled to distributions.
The announcement indicates that the amendment is intended to commence from 1 July 2026. If these announced but unenacted measures become law, the requirement to send us a TFN report will no longer apply to distributions from 1 July 2026. Instead, the beneficiary TFN must be reported in the statement of distribution when completing your trust tax return.
Announced measures that are not yet law will be subject to consideration by government. We can't provide advice on unenacted measures.
This does not change TFN withholding and reporting obligations of trustees where the beneficiary's TFN has not been quoted before the payment of any distributions.
Additional labels will be included on the 2027 trust tax return to support circumstances where a TFN has not been provided.