Trust vs company

This is one of those decisions people overthink.

The better way is to decide what problem you're solving:
- income streaming?
- liability separation?
- retaining profits?
- long-term family planning?

Trust and company structures do different jobs.

The mini-story: the structure chosen because "someone said it's best"

A friend says, "Companies are best for tax."
Another says, "Trusts protect assets."
So you pick one and hope.

Two years later you realise your structure doesn't match your reality:
you needed profit retention, not streaming.
Or you needed separation, not complexity.

The simple comparison

A company is typically about:
- running a business with formal separation
- potentially retaining profits inside an entity
- formal obligations (and therefore formal discipline)

A trust is typically about:
- flexibility in how income is allocated
- separating wealth from personal risk
- longer-term family planning and control

These aren't moral differences. They're mechanical differences.

The operating truth

If you won't run clean records, both structures become expensive.

Structure only improves outcomes when it's operated like a system.

How Self Managed helps

Self Managed supports the operating layer:
- transaction categorisation
- reconciliation
- CGT/cost-base tracking (where relevant)
- reporting outputs that match the underlying activity

Read alongside:
- Tax minimisation
- Asset categories