Trust Tax Return & Financials - reasonable prices?

What is a reasonable price to pay for a unit trust tax return and financials with one investment property if the client submits a complete fully summaried Excel spreadsheet of all income & expenses? If charged over $1k for this is this considered excessive?

Should there be different pricing between a discretionary trust, unit trust & hybrid trust if either is exactly the same (one property) and the info given is summaried the same?

 

Could write a book on what needs to be considered. 1k sounds cheap

 

Could you elaborate a bit on this please? I would've thought it's not too difficult or time consuming for an accountant to just take the exact same info summaried point by point in an Excel spreadsheet and do data entry into their system to do the tax return and financial statement. Especially when no extra advice is given.

 

That assumes the information you provide is correct. If you were that confident why not just do it yourself?

 

It's not that hard to add up 4 quarterly council rates, water rates, strata, then input the insurance, land tax, bank interest, loan interest, EOFY rental statement figures into a spreadsheet correctly so it's ready for an accountant to use it.

Don't do it myself because I don't know how to do financial statements & it's better have an accountant do everything.

 

Units issued reconciles to the unit register.

Any e4 issues from distributions of non assessable amount eg capital works

Carried forward losses ? Losses schedule ?

Is a tb schedule required ?

Trust distributions resolutions.

Amounts as loans or subscribed units ? Need to issue further units ?

And the list continues

 

We pay circa $15k for 6 entities - personal, trusts, company. we handover reconciled myob for company and bank acct reconciliation SS for rentals. All depends on scope, scale and complexity i guess.

 

Yes, A fairly long list that is different each time !! trust elections, residency issue and so much more.

One of the issues I encounter a lot is the belief that a trust just needs a tax return. I dont accept those jobs - They are a legal time bomb for the adviser. And a sign the trust isnt correctly maintained.

A trust determines its net trust income by preparing financial reports. These will explain the sources and amounts of each class of income and how it is distributed. The trust will have assets, and liabilities. The difference between its assets and liabilities may need to reflect each years profits and how they were distributed or retained. And supported by other documents.

A trust is a legal concept. Not just a taxpayer.

Hybrid trusts can have issues that are different to a fixed unit trust. A discretionary trust is possibly the more complex. Depends.

 

Many trust deeds require the trustee to prepare financials so by only preparing a trust tax return you would be assisting the trustee in breaching their obligations under the trust deed