About MTAS changes for trustees
We're making changes to trust reporting aimed at reducing red tape, streamlining workflow, and reducing overall compliance costs.
Improvements to the information reported by trustees in the trust tax return will:
- provide greater transparency
- enable more targeted compliance
- reduce unnecessary contact with us.
By changing the information that is included in the statement of distribution, and enabling this information to be available in pre-fill, we will improve the ability of beneficiaries to report correctly.
What to expect in Tax Time 2026
When preparing your trust tax return for 2025–26, you'll notice a change to the labels in the statement of distribution section of your trust tax return. We’re adding 3 labels:
- 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.
These new labels will:
- improve your ability to notify beneficiaries of their entitlement to income
- support the calculation of their Net financial investment loss at IT5 in their tax return.
We recommend you provide beneficiaries with a copy of the trust statement of distribution where it relates to their entitlement to trust income. Lodging your trust tax return as early as possible can also help your individual beneficiaries to prepare their return, particularly where they lodge via myTax or through a different tax agent to the trust.
Behind the scenes, we're improving lodgment checks by identifying common errors and helping you and your tax agent get it right. We've also reduced the amount of additional information to be submitted separately from the trust tax return form. These changes are aimed at:
- simplifying lodgment requirements
- reducing our need to contact you about the trust tax return
- improving processing times.
Coming up in Tax Time 2027
There'll be further changes in the 2027 trust tax return, including:
- new labels planned for the statement of distribution
- other reporting changes aimed at streamlining the processing of trust returns and improving transparency.
You should already be collecting much of this information. The increased reporting obligations will help you to report correctly and allow us to focus compliance activity on where we see the greatest risk.
Statement of distribution updates
Changes to the statement of distribution include:
- Reporting of unpaid present entitlements of beneficiaries.
- Reporting rateable reductions applied when calculating franked distributions and capital gains amounts. This will help beneficiaries to report correctly.
- Simpler reporting of non-resident beneficiary distributions of interest, unfranked dividends, royalties and associated tax withheld. This will remove the need to provide additional information to the trust tax return form.
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).
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.
Expansion of our online services
We are working to deliver a new online lodgment option in Online services for business to support trusts with simple reporting obligations. Self-preparer trusts with an ABN will be able to lodge the trust tax return electronically.
This option will:
- improve and streamline the reporting experience for trustees
- improve the quality of information received by the ATO, minimising the need to contact you about the lodgment.