Varying the terms of a trust may constitute a trust acquisition or trust surrender and therefore be subject to transfer duty. However, from 4 May 2009 the document does not have to be lodged with the Office of State Revenue for endorsement when any of the below apply:
- The trust does not hold dutiable property.
- The trust does not have an indirect interest in dutiable property.
- The variation of the terms of the trust is administrative in nature (e.g. alterations to rules, standard conditions and general clauses).
The Registrar of Titles has been advised that this type of transaction may be lodged directly with the Titles Office without an endorsement.
To find out whether a variation of trust is dutiable or not, use the flow chart below.
Please use our variation of a trust decision tree to work out whether a transaction can be self assessed.