This question is being asked a great deal at the moment, usually with more urgency than the facts justify. Here is a calmer way to work through it.
First, why you have a trust
Most family trusts holding a business were set up for some mix of four reasons.
Income distribution flexibility. The ability to direct income to whichever beneficiary is on the lowest marginal rate that year.
Asset protection. Business assets held by a trustee rather than personally, so a claim against the individual does not automatically reach them.
Capital gains tax concessions. Access to the 50 per cent discount, and the small business CGT concessions where the tests are met.
Succession. The ability to pass control without transferring legal ownership of assets.
The proposed reforms hit the first of those hard and leave the other three broadly intact. That is the key point most of the commentary misses. A trust is not only a tax planning vehicle, and if you chose it for asset protection or succession, the case for it has not changed.
What actually changes, and when
The 30 per cent minimum tax on discretionary trusts is proposed from 1 July 2028. It is not law and the design is still in consultation. If enacted as described, distributions to individuals on marginal rates below 30 per cent stop producing a benefit, and distributions to corporate beneficiaries become actively expensive.
Separately, and this one is law, the Act that received Royal Assent on 26 June 2026 replaces the 50 per cent CGT discount for individuals and trusts with cost base indexation from 1 July 2027, with the discount continuing for eligible new residential dwellings and affordable housing.
Also law, and easy to overlook: from 1 July 2027 the aggregated turnover threshold for small business entities rises from $2 million to $10 million for the purposes of the small business 50 per cent reduction. That is a genuine widening of access, and it applies to that concession specifically rather than to the other small business CGT concessions.
The questions worth working through
Not "should I change my structure", which is unanswerable in the abstract, but these.
What does the trust actually hold? Business assets, land, shares, or just an operating business with no assets of substance. The answer changes the cost of any restructure enormously, because land brings state transfer duty into the picture.
Who are the beneficiaries and what are their marginal rates? If everyone who receives distributions is already above 30 per cent, the minimum tax may change less for you than you think.
Is there a corporate beneficiary, and what is owed to it? This is the exposure most people have not quantified.
What would a restructure cost? Federal rollover relief has been announced for a three year period, proposed to be broader than the existing small business restructure rollover. But the consultation paper does not address state transfer duty, which for a Queensland trust holding land is often the single largest number in the calculation.
What did you actually want the trust for? If the answer is asset protection or succession, that has not been touched.
The timing
There is a three year runway and the rules are not settled. Restructuring in 2026 to avoid a 2028 measure that is still in consultation risks paying real duty and triggering real capital gains to solve a hypothetical problem.
What is worth doing now is getting your structure documented on one page, with the entities, the assets, the balances and the relationships. Most business owners cannot produce that, and it is the prerequisite for every decision that follows.