Action required on your Trust!

Trusts are a useful tool for planning the distribution of wealth for both practical and financial reasons. They come in a variety of forms, and work by allowing you to settle assets into the Trust by removing them from your estate while often making provision for retaining an element of control over the settled assets. By removing assets from your estate, you can determine who benefits from them and potentially make tax savings in the process.

If you have a Trust that is required to complete a tax return, you should be familiar with HMRC’s Trust Registration Service and no further action is required provided your trust has been registered and you are complying with making annual declarations via this service. This applies to Trusts with any kind of ‘tax consequence’ whether that is inheritance tax, income tax or capital gains tax.

If you have any other Trust, even if its dormant or a ‘pilot’, you will soon be required to register it with the Trust Registration Service. At present, the service is not open for these registrations, however it is expected to be open sometime this summer. Unfortunately, an agent’s authorisation with HMRC to act on behalf of a Trust for self-assessment purposes does not apply to this registration and so a new authorisation will need to be put in place as part of the process if you would like an agent to deal with this on your behalf.

At the moment, while waiting for the service to open, we are preparing for the changes behind the scenes, however, we will be sending a letter containing further detail of the process to all lead Trustees of clients affected by this new requirement in due course. If you would like any further information on the Trust Registration Service or your obligations, please do get in touch.