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31 August 2021 Australian Treasury releases revised draft law on Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle regime On 27 August 2021, the Australian Treasury released updated drafts of tax and regulatory laws for the proposed Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle (CCIV) regime. The long proposed CCIV regime is intended to provide Australian funds managers with an internationally recognizable collective investment vehicle with flow through tax treatment. The CCIV is intended to attract foreign investors that are more familiar with corporate structures globally, rather than Australia’s local managed investment trust (MIT) and attribution managed investment trust (AMIT) structures, to expand opportunities to export Australia’s funds management expertise. The CCIV is also seen as critical to the success of the Asian Region Fund Passport (ARFP) which allows eligible funds to be marketed across ARFP member countries, with limited extra regulatory requirements. The latest Treasury release of the draft law builds on the regulatory package released in January 2019 and adjusts the 2019 approach for the taxation of CCIVs, in response to submissions from EY and others. The Federal Government announced in the 2021 Budget that the regime will be operational from 1 July 2022. EY welcomes the latest changes to the proposed CCIV tax rules which will make the regime far more workable than previous proposals. However, further adjustments should be considered to address previously identified issues and new issues which emerge from the draft. Funds managers, custodians and administrators should carefully review the current packages of tax and regulatory law to provide any feedback to Treasury by the due date of 24 September 2021. Funds managers should consider whether to commence planning for how CCIVs will be used and once the final law is clear, designing CCIV products as well as policies and systems to manage the regulatory and taxation requirements, alongside their MIT products. The general tax treatment of CCIVs and their members should align with the existing tax treatment of AMITs and their members. Improvements in this latest package of draft tax law compared to the 2019 draft include the following:
A CCIV is a company registered under the Corporations Act that is limited by shares and which satisfies certain regulatory requirements. The new draft regulatory provisions build on the core regulatory framework and basic operational requirements for CCIVs set out in the 2019 Exposure Draft package. The removal of the requirement for an independent depository for retail CCIVs will address previous concerns around duplication of certain supervisory aspects of the corporate director’s role and the practical difficulties of satisfying the proposed independence test. Instead CCIVs will have the flexibility to appoint a custodian. In addition, the removal of the prohibition on cross investment between sub funds of CCIVs is consistent with comparable overseas regimes. This will assist fund managers who wish to establish umbrella fund structures for cost efficiencies and economies of scale. We note that some of the proposed features of the CCIV framework apply to both retail and wholesale CCIVs imposing a greater regulatory oversight on wholesale CCIVs than the existing regime for wholesale managed investment schemes. This could create a regulatory arbitrage between wholesale Managed Investment Schemes and CCIVs and could discourage fund managers from using the CCIV regime for wholesale funds.
Document ID: 2021-5908 |