What structure - Personal or Trust or Company work best if Buy and Hold International ETFs and Share

I am planning to build portfolio with 2-3 ETFs and 5-10 selected shares with buy, accumulate and hold approach to build my retirement kitty. Will be mainly investing in US based ETFs like IVV, NDQ and VAS and Tech stocks in US.

Both spouse and myself - 40 yrs and in top MTR. Two kids - 8 yrs and 1 month. Got 1.2 mil of PPOR loan to pay-off. I may sell some of the stocks after 2-3 years provided I made handsome gains in them to help me pay-off my PPOR loan early. But majority of investment will stay to allow build retirement kitty.

Based on my research so far, i understand that

1. Setup and annual maintenance cost of Trust + Company is expensive could be upto $2k per annum
2. Discretionary trust and Company as a trustee is one popular option but not sure what is the benefit in my case if i am not selling these investments until retirement when i will be in lowest tax bracket anyways (asset protection not issue for me)

Need experts view on what is the best structure to invest in share/etf for long term based on my scenerio?

 

Do these sorts of shares pay dividends?

 

Yes some of those ETFs pay dividends. Since the ETFs are trusts by themselves, annual distribution may also have capital gain/loss. I know OP is not going to sell the shares of the ETF; but the ETFs themselves internally may have capital gain/loss, and they need to pass this gain/loss to the end-users. I do/did not own any of those ETFs mentioned, but with some other ETFs traded on ASX, I found that capital gains + dividends were attributed to my account.

 

Yes. They will have some dividend which I understand will get added to my annual income and result in highest tax (unlike 30% in DT / bucket company approach). But i am targeting growth stocks with switch over divided stocks like CBA in retirement stage when regular income is required. To give more information - I am targeting regular investment of avg $15 per quarter for next 20 years. Does putting share /etf investment in complexity of trust / bucket model worth it in my case?

 

Ive written a number of posts on the structuring the ownership of shares. There are a couple of threads on trusts and a few on companies. Read those and then consider what could happen if you or the spouse died -estate planning aspects. Then get some expensive legal and tax advice.
I refuse to advise on any international aspects as very complex.