Dear Members,

Summer is upon us… all of a sudden we’re 3 quarters of the way through the year!

This month we would like to concentrate on an important warning regarding an accountant who was charged with contempt of court for preparing their own superannuation fund deeds with a pro-forma document, and some other helpful information.

COURT FINDS THAT ACCOUNTANT PREPARING SUPER DEED WOULD HAVE BREACHED THE LEGAL PRACTICE ACT

The Legal Practice Board of WA recently took an accounting firm (a company) to court, alleging that the firm was illegally engaging in legal practice by preparing superannuation fund trust deeds.

The court dismissed the contempt of court charge because the relevant action had been brought under the wrong section of the law, being S.123 of the Legal Practice Act 2003 (WA), instead of S.125 which seemed to be more appropriate for corporations.

However, the court went on to find that accountants cannot prepare deeds or other legal documents for clients, and that they must obtain such documents from qualified lawyers.

What did the accountant do wrong?
The company ran an accounting firm which advertised that it could “prepare and file the registration of your self-managed superannuation fund ("SMSF") and prepare a trust deed [for] just $330.”

The principal of the firm was under the impression, from speaking with the ATO and also some ATO brochures, that accountants can provide SMSF deeds to clients, and so obtained a pro-forma of an SMSF trust deed from an internet company called Cleardocs way back in 2003.

In what appeared to be a “sting” operation, an individual made contact with the firm in late 2006 in order to obtain an SMSF deed, which was prepared by the firm and then provided to the individual (and it appeared that the accountant did not use the Cleardocs online system to order that particular deed, but instead prepared it itself, in-house, using the 2003 pro-forma deed). The deed was not executed, and no property was set aside for the fund, but the Legal Practice Board of WA then brought the action against the accounting firm for contempt of court under S.123 of the Legal Practice Act 2003 (WA).

CHANGE IS IN THE AIR!
As you are probably aware (if you’ve spoken to any of our staff on the phone in the last few months) we’re very busy here at NTAA Corporate (which we really appreciate!), and so, in order to maintain the high standards of service that we expect of ourselves, and also maintain our low costs, we will be introducing some changes to our services, from 1 October 2007. Some of these changes are detailed below, and the remainder can be found at http://www.interprac.com.au/corporate/NTAA Corporate Changes 011007.pdf

Changes to our standard constitution or deeds
We believe that our company constitutions, trust and super deeds, and partnership agreements (and all related documents), are all state of the art, and we continually monitor them to keep them that way. We are also looking at expanding the range of products available.

However, we understand that sometimes members would like to have these documents “tailored” to their clients’ circumstances. Of course, changing legal documentation can be fraught with danger unless it is carried out competently and expertly.

We are therefore pleased to announce that, in conjunction with our specialist external lawyers, we will be able to incorporate changes to our constitutions and deeds to ensure you and your clients receive the utmost protection.

Of course, if your clients are familiar with the documents and confident in their own abilities (or have their own legal advisors), they are welcome to order our standard documents and then make changes to those in accordance with the provisions in those documents (e.g., the members of a company can make changes to the constitution by special resolution).

New instruction forms
We will be updating all of our instruction forms, which can be downloaded from our website here: http://www.interprac.com.au/html/corporate_index.htm.

Alternatively, you can call us on 1800 700 666 and we will send them out to you.

Please use the updated forms where possible (and remember that you can type directly on to the Word document and then save it, rather than printing it out and handwriting on it), as this will reduce the need for phone calls and help save time.

New example directors’ resolution
We will be providing an example directors’ resolution in Word format which can be downloaded from our website and which will contain examples of many different types of resolutions the directors of a company may need to make.

New FAQs
We are currently compiling a (quite large) document to put on our website full of common questions from our members over the past few years. This will be updated on a regular basis as we collect more information from your queries.

We encourage everyone to refer to our FAQs first before sending in a query – it will hopefully save everyone some time! The FAQs will be available from our website.

Yours sincerely

Kerry Jones
NTAA Corporate Manager
 

C/- InterPrac Limited
NTAA Corporate
Level 3, 29-33 Palmerston Crescent
South Melbourne, VIC 3205
Phone: 03 9209 9799, OR Free Phone: 1800 700 666
Fax: 1300 361 816 (NB: this fax number will safely direct your order straight to NTAA Corporate's email - the best option)
Email: ntaacorporate@interprac.com.au 
Web: www.interprac.com.au/corporate 

NTAA Corporate is a service provided by InterPrac Ltd
InterPrac also offers the following services

• Leasing & Finance

• Mortgage Lending

• Financial Planning

www.interprac.com.au