Compliance for trusts

Trustees are subject to increasingly numerous and far reaching compliance and regulatory obligations. While seeking to navigate the regimes aimed at increasing transparency and minimising tax evasion worldwide, at the same time as ensuring compliance with data protection rules, trustees must have regard to their fiduciary duties and other trust law principles, such as confidentiality.

Beneficial ownership registers, Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and trustees

In 2014, the G20 countries agreed high-level principles on beneficial ownership transparency.

To implement these principles in the UK, the government introduced legislation which requires most UK companies to keep a register of people who have significant control over a UK company (PSC register) from 6 April 2016 in the same way as they keep a register of members or directors. In contrast to the register of members, which records the legal owners of the shares in a company, the PSC register is designed to record the identities of the individuals who are the ultimate beneficial owners and controllers of the company. This information has to be provided to Companies House when the confirmation statement is delivered. Companies House publishes all unprotected PSC information

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All in? Court confirms when a settlement is 'made' for the purposes of excluded property (Accuro Trust (Switzerland) SA v The Commissioners for HMRC)

Private Client analysis: This case considered the meaning of 'relevant property' under the settlements regime of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 (IHTA 1984) and, in particular, the time at which this definition is to be tested. The question arose as to whether the trustees of an offshore trust established by a non-UK domiciled settlor were subject to the UK settlements regime in respect of property added to the trust after the settlor became deemed domiciled in the UK, or whether they were exempt from such charges as the trust consisted solely of excluded property. The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) held that whether trust property is excluded property is based on the status of the trust at the time that it was established, not at the time that the property in question was added to the settlement. As a result, the trust in this case did consist solely of excluded property and no inheritance tax (IHT) charges arose as a result of either the ten-year anniversary or capital distributions. The FTT was also asked to consider whether their jurisdiction was appellate, or supervisory only. The FTT held that, while their jurisdiction was supervisory, the questions raised by the trustees were relevant in establishing whether HMRC had acted reasonably and that the outcome (ie that the paid IHT should be refunded and that no further IHT was due) would be the same in either case. Written by Katherine Willmott, senior associate solicitor at Foot Anstey LLP.

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