Originally Posted by
Snoopy
I am sure a lot of people will try to follow Maquarrie's interpretation, *until* they find out what it means! Every transaction has to be processed with an appropriate exchange rate all the way through the year. With some people using their Maquarrie account as a defacto Australian bank account and putting through several transactions per month it would be a logistical nightmare to process! Of course that is exactly what the Commissioner of Inland Revenue discovered, and that is one reason why he made a ruling to exempt the Macquarrie cash trust from the FIF regime.
The fact that the Macquarrie CMT fell into the FIF hole was an obvious (with the benefit of hindsight) mistake. It is clearly not the kind defacto overseas sharemarket investment that the FIF regime was designed to catch. I know that Macquarrie is Australian based. But given the number of New Zealand account holders I would have thought that a letter to NZ based Macquarrie CMT holders explaining to them that it was *not* part of the FIF regime would be in order. Macquarrie are not alone in falling short in their advice.
I have a BT Hi Yield account (very similar to the Macquarrie CMT) in Australia and I received a note to say that I should do my own internet search on the IRD website or contact my tax adviser to see whether I was 'caught' by the FIF regime. Of course when I found out that the BT Hi Yield Trust was an FIF exempt investment I was both pleased and unpleased. Pleased that I didn't have to grind through a mountain of paperwork to satisfy IRD requirements. But very unpleased that BT had not sent me a letter saying it was exempt, as in this instance it is exempt for *all* New Zealand taxpayers, regardless of circumstances.
When I rang BT to give them an ear bashing over this laziness, all they could say was
"Well, yeah we should have done that."
I wonder if Macquarrie or BT will update their advice to NZ based account holders? In my opinion they should.
SNOOPY