The Trust Registration Service – July 2024

The Trust Registration Service (TRS) has been in operation since being introduced by the Fourth Money Laundering Directive (MLD4) in 2017, and before then certain trusts needed to be registered with HMRC using the old 41G forms. The Fifth Money Laundering Directive (MLD5) is now expanding the scope of trust registration requirements to bring more trusts under the TRS. 

 

Prior to MLD5 trusts only needed to be registered with the TRS if they were express trusts with UK tax consequences. This included all UK express trusts where the trustees had incurred a tax liability. It also included non-UK resident express trusts which received UK source income or otherwise incurred a UK tax liability. This left a lot of trusts outside of the scope of registration. 

 

Under new provisions introduced by MLD5 this limitation to only register trusts that incur UK tax is removed. Under MLD5 all trusts must be registered with the TRS with some exceptions. 

It is the duty of the Trustees of a settlement that must be registered to ensure that the relevant information is collated and the trust registered with the TRS. As with many other trustees’ duties they may employ an agent to deal with this on their behalf. It is also their duty to ensure that the TRS is updated within 30 days of any changes to the trust. 

 

If a trustee fails to register the trust on time or update the register when there are changes they may face a fine of £100 per offence. 

 

HMRC have recently been able to provide the deadlines for registration as the updated TRS has been in place since 1 September 2021 and open to non-taxable trust registration. 

 

 

This gives plenty of time for trustees of existing settlements to gather the information they will need to register the trust when it becomes necessary.