HMRC’s Trust Registration Service – have your clients registered their trusts yet? It’s easy to comply
“Just a small fraction of trusts appear to have been registered by trustees through HMRC’s Trust Registration Service. The lack of registrations suggests that the requirements have largely gone under the radar of most trustees.”
Edward Grant, director – Technical Connection
New responsibilities for trustees
Being a trustee is a mark of personal integrity, as it comes with considerable administrative and legal responsibilities.
As legal professionals, many of you may be trustees yourselves, or act on behalf of clients who are trustees. So, we want to make sure that you and your clients are up to date with the important change in the law regarding trusts.
What’s changed?
Even if a trust doesn’t pay tax, it must still be registered with HMRC’s Trust Registration Service (TRS). The deadline was 1 September 2022, or within 90 days of a trust being set up.
This deadline has now passed and many of the UK’s circa one million trusts still haven’t been registered. Therefore, the chances that one of your clients might have overlooked the need to register are high.
The good news is that HMRC has taken a pragmatic approach to registrations, but time is still of the essence to avoid future HMRC penalties.
Why the change?
Even though we’re not part of the EU anymore, we still need to comply with new, European-wide anti-money laundering legislation. This means that registering with the TRS is now compulsory for almost all trusts, whether they pay tax or not. If a trust is liable for capital gains tax or inheritance tax, the chances are that it is already registered.
Helping a client to register their trust
We believe in making all aspects of financial advice simple and straightforward, especially where trusts are concerned.
If your client is already with St James' Place (SJP) for financial advice, they can contact their partner. But even if they’re not a client, we’re more than happy to lend a hand.
We’ve made a checklist of all the documentation they’ll need, and a step-by-step video to guide them through the registration process.
Guiding you through the red tape
You may be aware already that only one trustee can actually register the trust – this is the lead trustee. If there are multiple trustees, the first step is to decide if your client will lead.
The online registration process itself is straightforward – but can be time consuming.
Your client will need to register via the HMRC website, where they create a Government Gateway User ID, password, a Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) and register details of the trust, its settlors, beneficiaries and trustees.
If there’s more than one trust, each one must be registered separately.
As a rule of thumb, the process can take up to half an hour, but if you can’t complete it in one sitting, you can save, and log back in to complete for up to 28 days.
We have a number of options to support trustees including our guided mezzanine service and full agency completion service, both designed to make it easier for trustees to comply with the requirements.
If it’s an SJP trust, we’ll have all the necessary details too, as you would expect.
SJP trust investment services: Making sense of the complexity
Becoming a trustee can be very rewarding, but it’s a big responsibility. Whether you’re setting up a trust yourself or you’ve been asked to act on behalf of someone else, you’re accountable to your beneficiaries.
As a trustee, you have a legal requirement to get professional financial advice – whether you’re arranging a new investment or reviewing existing ones. Our specialist trustee investment services can help you to create responsible and sustainable investment strategies, in the most tax-efficient way.
Trusts are a valuable way to protect people, property, and assets for the future – a treasure chest to which only the trustees have the key.
If you’re about to take on the responsibilities of trusteeship, or already in post, but need expert advice on investing for the best, we’re here.
It’s up to a trustee to ensure that everything is in order.
The value of an investment with St. James's Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
We’re happy to help any of your clients who are trustees and still need to register their trusts. Just get in touch with us for advice, or to request a TRS checklist.
Trusts are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
The ‘St. James's Place Partnership’ and the titles ‘Partner’ and ‘Partner Practice’ are marketing terms used to describe St. James’s Place representatives.
Members of the St. James’s Place Partnership in the UK represent only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
St. James’ s Place Wealth Management plc
Registered office: St. James’s Place House, 1 Tetbury Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 1FP
Registered in England Number 4113955