Trust Registration and HMRC TRS Updates

What it is

Most express trusts now have to be registered with HMRC, whether or not there is any tax to pay, and the record has to be kept up to date afterwards. This is a continuing obligation on the trustees, not a one off form.

How it works

• A new registrable trust generally has 90 days from creation to register.
• A trust with a tax liability normally registers by 31 January following the end of the tax year in which the liability arose, or by 5 October after the tax year for a first liability to income tax or Capital Gains Tax.
• The register records the settlor, the trustees, the beneficiaries and anyone with control over the trust, including named people in a letter of wishes. Unnamed classes can be described rather than listed.
• Trustees must keep the details current, and confirm where nothing has changed.
• Professional trustees have separate record keeping duties that continue for years after a trust ends.

The exclusions people rely on, and the ones that expire

Excluded trusts include trusts for bereaved minors, trusts for bereaved young people, disabled persons' interests, certain policy trusts, trusts of jointly owned property where the trustees and the beneficiaries are the same people, charitable trusts, and trusts arising under a court order or on intestacy.

Two of these catch families out repeatedly.

• A Will trust holding only estate assets is excluded, but only if it is wound up within two years of the death. A life interest trust still running at the second anniversary has to register, even with no tax to pay.
• The exclusion for jointly owned property only applies while the legal owners and the beneficial owners are the same people. The moment a share passes under a Will to somebody who is not on the legal title, the surviving owner is holding on trust for a third party and a registration obligation arises. Very few people realise this has happened.

Where specialist advice matters

• Working out whether a particular trust is registrable at all is often the hardest part, and getting it wrong in either direction has consequences.
• A deed of variation that creates a new trust starts a fresh obligation, with the beneficiary who redirected treated as the settlor.
• Appointments, retirements of trustees, deaths and changes of address all need reflecting on the register.
• Some information on the register can be released on request in defined circumstances, so accuracy matters for reasons beyond compliance.