The Revenue and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 (Qld) received Royal Assent on 8 April 2011. The Bill is now Act No 8 of 2011. As a consequence, we point out a list of important changes to the Duties Act 2001 (Qld) which may have some impact on your clients’ businesses:  

  1. clarifying the operation of the corporate reconstruction duty exemption and making it clear that an arrangement under which a company involved with any of the transactions will or may cease to belong to the same corporate group (other than as permitted) will preclude the transaction being a corporate reconstruction;  
  2. providing an exemption for the transfer of dutiable property to a special disability trust in certain circumstances;
  3. extending the conditions for the change of trustee exemption to require that transfer duty has been paid on all previous liable trust surrenders for the trust;  
  4. clarifying the circumstances in which a dutiable transaction is a partition subject to the duty concession. The clarification provides that where dutiable property that is held jointly by co-owners as joint tenants or tenants in common is transferred or agreed to be transferred to one or more of the coowners, the transaction is a partition for section 31 of the Duties Act if the dutiable property transferred or agreed to be transferred includes the interest in the property held by the transferee immediately before the transaction. For example, where A and B own land as joint tenants and agree that B is to own the land outright, if the transfer is effected with A and B as transferors and B as transferee the transaction is a partition under section 31(1) of the Duties Act. If the transfer is effected with A as transferor and B as transferee the transaction is not a partition under section 31(1) of the Duties Act  
  5. allowing the imposition of administrative penalties as an alternative to prosecuting for an offence for certain self assessment matters  
  6. clarifying that the definition of "registered managed investment scheme" means a managed investment scheme within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Corporations Act) that is registered under the Corporations Act. This is to ensure that where a scheme is registered under the Corporations Act but, for whatever reason, is no longer a managed investment scheme within the meaning of the Corporations Act, it will no longer constitute a "registered managed investment scheme" for the purposes of the Duties Act;  
  7. removing the requirement for a person to pay duty before being entitled to a concession under the cancelled transfer provisions or the reassessment provisions; and  
  8. other amendments concerning concessional vehicle registration duty arrangements and transfer duty relief relating to registered indigenous land use agreements under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).