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 trust tax return labels
When preparing your client's tax return for 2025–26, you'll see 3 new labels in the statement of distribution section:
- 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've worked 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 (DSP) will let you know how:
- these changes affect the software you're using
- to resolve any errors before you can lodge the trust tax return.
These enhancements will prevent you sending us information that delays the processing of trust tax returns.
Trust distribution pre-fill for individual beneficiaries
We've made statement of distribution data available in pre-fill reports for individual beneficiaries from 1 July 2026. The data now becomes available in pre-fill once we've 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 shouldn't affect your current workflows when you lodge 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.
You should review pre-fill information against other information provided by the trustee. You should include the most up-to-date information in the trust income schedule with the beneficiary's tax return.
Lodging the trust tax return as early as possible will help reduce queries about missing distribution statements and the costs in managing those requests.
Coming up in Tax Time 2027
We'll be updating the 2027 trust tax return with additional labels that support the recently legislated changes to beneficiary reporting for closely held trusts.
The requirement to send us a TFN report after a beneficiary quotes their TFN will no longer apply from 1 July 2026. Instead, the beneficiary TFN must be reported in the statement of distribution when completing the 2027 trust tax return.
This does not change TFN withholding and reporting obligations of trustees where the beneficiary's TFN hasn't been quoted before the payment of any distributions.
To support this legislated change, we'll add more to the 2027 trust tax return:
- Trust’s details: Is the trust a closely-held trust?
- Item 58 Statement of distribution (for each beneficiary): tax file number (TFN) not provided by beneficiary.
DSPs will include in-software changes to validations to support the new labels, including a requirement to provide a beneficiary address when reporting distributions.
Coming up in Tax Time 2028
We'll make further changes to the 2028 trust tax return, including:
- new labels across the return, statement of distribution, and trust income schedule
- improvements to the layout of the trust tax return and trust income schedule
- additional pre-lodgment validations
- other reporting changes aimed at streamlining the processing of a trust return to improve transparency.