Commonwealth Numbered Acts Commonwealth Numbered Acts(1) Entity means any of the following:
(a) an individual;
(b) a body corporate;
(c) a body politic;
(d) any other unincorporated association or body of persons;
(e) a trust.
Note: The term entity is used in a number of different but related senses. It covers all kinds of legal person. It also covers groups of legal persons, and other things, that in practice are treated as having a separate identity in the same way as a legal person does.
(2) Paragraph (1)(d) does not include a non-entity joint venture (within the meaning of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 ).
(3) The trustee of a trust is taken to be an entity consisting of the person who is the trustee, or the persons who are the trustees, at any given time.
Note 1: This is because a right or obligation cannot be conferred or imposed on an entity that is not a legal person.
Note 2: The entity that is the trustee of a trust does not change merely because of a change in the person who is the trustee of the trust, or persons who are the trustees of the trust.
(4) A legal person can have a number of different capacities in which the person does things. In each of those capacities, the person is taken to be a different entity.
Example: In addition to his or her personal capacity, an individual may be:
(a) sole trustee of one or more trusts; and
(b) one of a number of trustees of a further trust.
In his or her personal capacity, he or she is one entity. As trustee of each trust, he or she is a different entity. The trustees of the further trust are a different entity again, of which the individual is a member.
(5) If a provision refers to an entity of a particular kind, it refers to the entity in its capacity as that kind of entity, not to that entity in any other capacity.
Example: A provision that refers to a company does not cover a company in a capacity as trustee, unless it also refers to a trustee.