FOI reveals 211,000 Trusts registered with HMRC

  • 61,692 Trusts have been registered with the taxman in the first six months of 2022
  • HMRC received almost twice as many registrations in May and June 2022 than in the whole of 2021
  • Deadline to register a Trust with HMRC is 1st September 2022

 

A Freedom of Information request to HMRC has revealed that 211,381 Trust registrations have been received since the Trustee Registration Service began in June 2017. This is an increase of almost 60,000 registrations in just five months with over 36,000 received in May and June alone, almost double the total number received in 2021.

 

The deadline for the majority of express trusts to be registered on the service is 1 September 2022 with the onus on trustees to register through HMRC's online portal by that date. Canada Life has prepared a simple user friendly guide to help advisers and Trustees to register their Trusts. https://www.canadalife.co.uk/technical-support/registering-your-trust/

 

Stacey Love, tax and estate planning specialist at Canada Life comments:

“It’s great to see that the message to register is starting to get through to Trustees, however the clock is ticking and we still have a long way to go to ensure all the trusts that are required to register do so by the deadline.

 

“Using a trust has been such a fundamental part of the tax and estate planning landscape for so long it's entirely possible the existence of a trust may have faded into the background. As a result, many ‘ordinary’ people who are trustees may not realise that TRS registration still applies, unless they pay close attention to the financial press or receive regulatory updates from HMRC. With no central HMRC communication it’s imperative that providers and advisers work together to flag up these new rules with all of their trustee clients affected by the regulations.

 

“With around 1 million trusts needing to be registered there is still a significant amount of work to complete and the onus is on advisers and providers to highlight the process to trustees.”

 

 

 

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

2017

-

-

-

-

-

-

148

315

719

988

4,017

5,935

2018

16,783

34,359

28,330

2,701

1,748

1,601

1,889

1,832

1,840

2,312

993

928

2019

1,785

861

834

847

777

1,032

1,321

889

1,071

1,284

830

787

2020

1,613

802

782

634

507

743

720

701

1,278

1,114

1,232

1,067

2021

2,105

1064

1,219

945

973

1,017

1,072

1,047

1,927

2,375

2,801

2,195

2022

3,552

5,270

8,100

8,410

13,920

22,440

 

 

 

 

 

 

Number of Trusts registered by month, source Canada Life FOI to HMRC July 2022