Supportive tax advisers regularly assist clients in ways that bridge financial and legal functions, including:

• Proposing trust distribution resolutions to trustees, not only to achieve tax-effective outcomes but also to ensure end-of-financial-year trustee distribution resolutions are made before the 30 June deadline in compliance with trust law and tax requirements.
  
  
• Keeping ASIC corporate records accurate and up to date, helping clients avoid unnecessary late fees and ensuring third parties can rely on accurate company data. Directors can, for instance, be at a significant disadvantage under the director penalty notice (DPN) provisions if their current address is not recorded on ASIC’s records, as they only have 21 days to respond to respond to a DPN.
  
  
• Checking corporate registers and company minute books for completeness, preserving their evidentiary value under section 251A of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). Section 251A(6) provides that a minute, that is recorded and signed, is evidence of the proceeding, resolution or declaration to which it relates, unless the contrary is proved. Thus, making sure there are appropriate resolutions and minutes in place provides evidence of each resolution.
  
  
• Ensuring there are appropriate loan agreements in place, including ones that need to comply with Division 7A of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth) (ITAA 1936). Moreover, the accountants or tax adviser needs to remind their clients to make the minimum yearly repayment (MYR) under any Division 7A loan agreements. Unless the MYR is made by the relevant deadline, a deemed unfranked dividend can arise for the remaining value of the loan, invariably resulting in a significant tax penalty.
  
  
• Checking that appropriate family trust elections (FTE) and interposed entity elections (IEE) are in place in respect of each trust, company and partnership within the broader family group in accordance with Schedule 2F of the ITAA 1936. The ATO has been closely scrutinising family groups and in some cases finding significant exposure to family trust distribution tax (FTDT) at a 47 per cent rate on distributions of both capital and income that is to an outsider of the limited ‘family group’ that is set out in s 272-90 of the ITAA 1936.
  
  
• Ensuring trust accounts and financial statements are supported by appropriate records and evidence. For example, for each property, there is a title search confirming the correct registered owner and the volume and folio numbers for each title. These documents are also important in relation to estate and succession planning, especially where complex and multi-tiered structures are involved.
  
  
• Multiple of other documents and tasks – accountants and tax advisers typically assist clients with a broad range of other documents and tasks, and are often the key drivers for clients to complete legal documents such as wills, powers of attorney, deed updates and other strategic and compliance documents and tasks.

While some of these tasks must be addressed annually, others benefit from less frequent — but no less important — periodic review.

These include:

• Encouraging trustees to review their trust deeds and company constitutions to ensure the governing rules reflect current legislation and strategic planning opportunities.
  
  
• DBA Lawyers, for example, updates – at least annually – the terms of our SMSF governing rules so that clients are equipped with the most up-to-date and versatile terms for trustees and maximised reliability for members. Moreover, given the ongoing and substantial changes in tax and super rules and practice, we generally recommend that SMSF deeds be updated on a 5-yearly basis.
  
  
• The importance of having a constitution appropriately designed to support the purpose of your company, especially if it acts as the corporate trustee of an SMSF or special disability trust (SDT), can also not be overstated.
  
  
• Reviewing superannuation death benefit nominations to ensure they remain valid and appropriately aligned with clients’ current pension arrangements, asset holdings, and estate plans — helping reduce the risks of paying unnecessary tax, minimise disputes and unintended outcomes. The role of the accountant and tax adviser in relation to reviewing these documents includes understanding that:
  
  
• The payment of a member’s death benefit is left to the SMSF trustee to decide, not to the executor, if a binding death benefit nomination (BDBN) is not in place. Under most SMSF deeds, unless there is a BDBN that removes the trustee’s discretion to choose between the legal personal representative (LPR, eg, executor) or a dependant of the deceased member, the SMSF trustee must decide on who and how to pay the deceased member’s death benefit.
  
  
• If a member does not want the SMSF trustee choosing how the death benefit should be paid, the completion of a BDBN is a key step to a member’s direction over who is paid their superannuation benefit following their death. BDBNs can be made in a number of ways, with varying degrees of certainty being achieved for the member — see here for some examples of the different approaches taken, and here for considerations to make when drafting a BDBN in light of pensions and the rules of the trust. We also recommend that succession to control of the corporate trustee is also a key factor and include a successor director strategy in our constitution to allow a director to nominate a person to ‘fill their role’ as director immediately upon them losing capacity or dying.

Undertaking legal work

Broadly, legal services include preparing documentation that creates or regulates rights between parties. Legal services for a fee should only be provided by a registered legal practitioner in the relevant jurisdiction, and lawyers are subject to regulatory supervision, must abide by strict professional and ethical rules and must have at least a minimum professional indemnity insurance (PI insurance) cover.

We recommend that accountants and tax advisers obtain legal advice and documentation from a quality law firm and do not undertake legal work themselves, unless they are appropriately qualified and licensed, have relevant experience and have appropriate and plenty of PI insurance.

Despite this, we are seeing an increasing number of non-qualified persons undertaking legal work and preparing a wide range of legal documents that are both complex and risky even for skilled lawyers to prepare without any lawyer input, leaving clients exposed to significant legal risk.

By engaging a law firm with the requisite expertise, you obtain:

• Confidence that the documents are prepared by lawyers who are qualified and have PI Insurance.
  
  
• The ability to obtain advice and support that may be required later on, and a relationship to refer your client to if ever needed.

In many cases, the added protection and support offered by a law firm is likely to outweigh any initial apparent cost savings from using a non-qualified supplier. In short, cheap does not always equal good!

Conclusion

By proactively supporting clients with their legal documentation obligations, accountants and tax advisers deliver more than compliance — they enhance legal certainty, reduce future risks, and help clients achieve greater control over the long-term financial outcomes of their businesses and estates. This holistic support is vital in an increasingly complex regulatory and commercial environment.