HMRC announced last week that the long-awaited service for non-tax paying trusts to register, as is required under the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, will be available from the beginning of September.  Trusts were originally required to register from March, but due to various delays the date was put back; Trustees will have 12-months to register from the launch date of the service.

Previously only trusts with tax liabilities to report were required to register with HMRC; when the service is launched, non-tax paying trusts will also be required to register. As a reminder, the main trusts that are exempt from the requirement to register are

• Trusts for life assurance policies with no surrender value
• Will Trusts created on death that only receive assets from the estate and are wound up within two years of date of death
• Charitable Trusts, who do not have to pay any tax on income or assets
• A trust created by legislation, e.g. when a person dies without making a will and the estate passes to their relatives under intestacy rules
• A trust imposed by a court, e.g. to hold compensation for a child

One thing to note is that the Trust is not registered via the trustee’s personal tax account, a separate Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) will need to be obtained by the lead trustee on behalf of the Trust.

Henwood Court is not able to complete the registration service for clients, but will be able to assist in providing the information which will be required to complete Trust registration.

The overall objective is to ensure that the UK’s Anti-Money Laundering and counter terrorism regimes are up to date. Whilst settlor, trustee, beneficiary and asset information will need to be provided in the course of registration, there is no public access to the register therefore privacy is maintained.

 

Information which will need to be provided:

The Trust

• Full name of the Trust
• Type of Trust
• Date the Trust was established
• A statement of accounts – a description of the Trust Assets & Value (including property address if a property is owned by the Trust)
• Country of residence of the Trust
• Where the Trust is administered
• Contact address for Trustees
• Name of any adviser being paid for legal, financial or tax advice

 

Settlor, Trustees and Beneficiaries

	Settlor	Trustees		Named beneficiaries
		Lead Trustee	All other Trustees
Full name	X	X	X	X
Date of birth	X	X	X	X
National Insurance Number (or UTR)	X	X	X	X
Residential address (if no NI number)	X	X	X	X
If address is outside UK – passport number and details	X	X	X	X
Nature of role in relation to the Trust	X	X	X	X
Telephone number		X

 

Settlor

The individual or organisation who put assets into the Trust

 

Trustees

All trustees are equally legally responsible for the Trust, but one ‘lead’ trustee must be nominated to be the main point of contact for HMRC. The lead Trustee will receive the Trust’s UTR and any reminders.

 

Beneficiaries

Details of all named beneficiaries must be given.

For those beneficiaries who will only benefit when a certain event happens, such as when another beneficiary dies, these can be included as ‘potential beneficiaries’ until that event occurs; at that point details would need to be provided on the register as a named beneficiary.

A class of beneficiary can be used to describe a group of individuals not yet known or named individually, e.g. future grandchildren.

 

Assets

Shares

• Share company name
• Number of shares
• Class and type of share
• Approximate value of the shares when the Trust is registered

 

Property and Land

• Address and description of the property or land
• Estimated full value at the time of registering the Trust
• Estimated value of the portion of land or property held in trust, if the Trust doesn’t own it all

 

Money

• The total amount in the Trust

 

Other assets (e.g. cars, jewellery, art)

• A description of the asset
• The value of the asset when the Trust is registered