National Register of Trusts

National Register of Trusts.

Many people do not have trusts set up.  Many do.  Some people set up trusts to protect wealth from inheritance tax.  We all saw the headlined with politicians globally having ‘hidden’ trusts set up in the offshore jurisdictions 2 years ago.

The fact is that trusts form part of our everyday lives.  Your pension fund is usually a trust or set up within a master trust of pension company.  Your Will on death creates a trust.  That trust may continue if wealth is left to children as they legally cannot take control of the wealth until an age is reached such as 18 yrs or 21 yrs old.  This means the money could be held in a trust for many years.

There are pension trusts, bare trusts, flexible trusts, discretionary trusts, Will trusts, disable trusts, child trusts and many more.

Trusts are a separate legal entity to you, us and companies.  Trusts are therefore subject to income taxes and capital gains taxes and have their own tax free allowances, tax rates etc.  In short, they must be registered with HMRC.

HMRC has recently changed how trusts must be registered with them.  Form 41G (Trust) to report a trust is being withdrawn and replaced this summer by a new registration service.

Rather than the paper based Form 41G, the new reporting process will be online.  This is then technically creating a National Register of Trusts.

Why are they doing this?

It is the ever increasing mission to globally stop money laundering.  Yet another Anti-Money Laundering Directive has been issued by the EU and this new Trusts register form part of this.