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What are stapled securities?

A stapled security is an investment product created when two or more securities are legally bound together and cannot be bought or sold separately. In Australia, they typically consist of a unit in a managed investment trust (MIT) stapled to a share in a related company.

Stapled securities are most common in the property sector, where they are used by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and infrastructure trusts. A-REITs pool investor capital to provide exposure to commercial properties — offices, shopping centres, industrial warehouses, and hotels — that would otherwise be inaccessible to individual investors. They are listed on the ASX and can be bought and sold like ordinary shares.

Common examples include:

• 360 Capital REIT (TOT)
• APA Group (APA)
• Arena REIT (ARF)
• Aspen Group Limited (APZ)
• BWP Trust (BWP)
• Centuria Capital Group (CNI)
• Centuria Office REIT (COF)
• Charter Hall Group (CHC)
• Charter Hall Long Wale REIT (CLW)
• Charter Hall Retail REIT (CQR)
• Cromwell Property Group (CMW)
• Garda Property Group (GDF)
• Goodman Group (GMG)
• GPT Group (GPT)
• Growthpoint Properties Australia (GOZ)
• Mirvac Group (MGR)
• RAM Essential Services Property Fund (REP)
• Region Group (RGN)
• Stockland (SGP)
• Transurban Group (TCL)
• US Masters Residential Property Fund (URF)
• Vicinity Centres (VCX)
• Waypoint REIT (WPR)
• WOTSO Property (WOT)
• Yancoal Australia (YAL)

Tax complexity

Although investors hold stapled securities as a single unit, each component carries distinct tax implications. The ATO requires that company dividends and trust distributions be reported separately on your tax return, which makes tax compliance more involved than for ordinary shares.

Key considerations include:

• Separate cost bases — each component (trust unit and company share) has its own cost base for CGT purposes
• Mixed distribution types — payouts typically include both trust income and company dividends, which are taxed differently
• Annual Tax Statement — the trust component will issue an Annual Tax Statement after 30 June each year, finalising the tax components for that financial year

Note: Some stapled securities may not have a 30 June financial year end. Tax compliance for these securities may require manual, bespoke treatment. If you hold stapled securities with a non-standard financial year end, please contact Sharesight support for assistance..

How Sharesight handles stapled securities

Sharesight automatically classifies all distributions from stapled securities as trust income. This ensures they are correctly captured in your Taxable Income Report and flow through to your tax calculations.

If your distribution contains both trust and non-trust components (e.g. a company dividend portion), you can edit individual distributions in Sharesight to split them accordingly. This allows you to correctly categorise income, calculate capital gains separately for each component, and adjust entries when your year-end Annual Tax Statement reveals the finalised breakdown.

Note: Sharesight does not automatically update AMIT tax components for stapled securities. You will need to manually enter these from your Annual Tax Statement each year. See Australian AMIT tax components for instructions.

Why did each distribution amount change at tax time?

Sometimes, after the finalised tax components replace the estimates — whether Sharesight pushed them through automatically or you entered them from your annual tax statement — the net amount of an individual distribution changes. It doesn't always happen, and where it does the change is often small (sometimes only a few cents). This is expected — here's why.

This can occur with any trust investment that pays more than one distribution a year — ETFs, managed funds, unit trusts and stapled securities alike. When the finalised components come in, Sharesight doesn't just update the annual totals — it re-apportions them back across each distribution: it works out each distribution's ratio of the year's total, then spreads the finalised figures across the distributions using those ratios. Because the finalised numbers differ from the earlier estimates, the split can shift — so one distribution might tick up and another down.

The key point: the total for the financial year stays the same — only how it's allocated across the individual distributions changes. If you reconcile at the yearly level (the sum of all distributions), it will still match your annual tax statement.

Tip: To check the yearly total, run the Taxable Income Report with Show holding totals turned on — it sums all distributions for each holding so you can reconcile against your statement.