Principles for account aggregation

1. The account aggregation principles are designed to assist an ADI with the treatment of balances in protected accounts. How an account is treated will depend on the entity type (as defined in section 960-100 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997) and whether the account is held in a single name or in multiple names.
2. An ADI must apply the following rules when dealing with protected accounts:

(a) each protected account attributable to an account-holder must be aggregated under an SCV for the purpose of establishing an account-holder’s balance;

(b) account aggregation for SCV purposes must include aggregation of all protected accounts in an account-holder’s name including protected joint accounts, business accounts, prescribed accounts and all other protected accounts held by an account-holder, whether individually or jointly;

(c) prescribed accounts must be included in the SCV and also flagged as being prescribed accounts, since all such accounts will be transferred to ‘like’ accounts at another ADI to preserve their status rather than being paid out to the account-holder;

(d) joint accounts must be split on a proportionate basis between all account-holders named on that account (e.g. for a joint account with four named account-holders, each account-holder would have one quarter of the total account balance included as part of their aggregated protected account balance);

(e) in the case of business accounts, where the account is held in a business name, the balance must be treated as belonging to a single account-holder, being the person (including corporations, etc) named as the account-holder. If a business account is held in multiple individual names (as may be the case with partnership accounts) the rules for joint accounts apply; and

(f) as for joint accounts, the balance in a partnership account is to be split proportionately among all named account-holders.

3. An ADI must separately identify and flag each pooled trust account held by an account-holder.