Consent to act as Trustee and Member Application

Once you have decided to set up an SMSF, you will need to:

  • decide what Trustee structure to use for your SMSF – individual Trustees (up to 6 individuals) or a Corporate Trustee
  • have at least 2 Trustees in the Fund as an ATO requirement
  • make sure that you and other Members in the Fund are eligible to be a Trustee of an SMSF
  • consider the residency status of all Members in your SMSF so the SMSF will be compliant and can receive tax concessions.

Structuring your SMSF

For your Fund to be a compliant SMSF, it needs to meet several requirements under the Superannuation Legislation. The requirements are different depending on the Trustee structure of the Fund:

A Corporate Trustee

If your SMSF has a Corporate Trustee, it is an SMSF if all of the following applies:

  • It has four or less Members
  • Each Member of the Fund is a director of the company
  • Each director of the Corporate Trustee is a Member of the SMSF
  • No Member is an employee of another Member, unless they are related
  • The Corporate Trustee is not paid for its services as a Trustee
  • No director of the Corporate Trustee is paid for their duties or services as director in relation to the Fund
A single Member

If you have a Corporate Trustee for a single Member Fund, the Member needs to be one of the following:

  • The sole director of the Trustee company
  • One of only two directors, that is either related to the other director / not an employee of the other director

You can also have two individual Trustees. One Trustee needs to be a Member and the other needs to be one of the following:

  • A person related to the Member
  • Any other person who does not employe them

The ATO also has a good video explaining in details on the structure of Trustees that an SMSF can adopt, please see below.

SMSF – Type of Trustees

To be a Member and Trustee of the Fund, you will need to complete a Member Application form and Trustee Consent. For our template, please click on the button below:

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