If within the scope of the regulations, trustees will be required to maintain accurate and up-to-date records of the ‘beneficial owners’ and ‘potential beneficiaries’ of the trust and to report specific information on the trust to HMRC.
Beneficial owners are defined to include the settlor, trustees, beneficiaries (even if only discretionary) and any individual with control over the trust. A potential beneficiary is someone referred to as a potential beneficiary in a document from the settlor relating to the trust such as a letter of wishes.
The information the trustees are required to report to HMRC includes:
- the name of the trust, its creation date and a statement of accounts describing the trust assets and identifying the value of each category of assets and;
- the name and UK tax reference number or national insurance number of the beneficial owners and potential beneficiaries, their correspondence address and other contact details, their date of birth and if not UK resident, their passport or ID number with its country of issue and expiry date.
In the case of a discretionary trust where not all of the beneficiaries have been determined (eg all future grandchildren of the settlor), then trustees will need to provide a description of the class of persons who are entitled to benefit from the trust.
