We have recently taken over a trust, including both the trusteeship and agent role. The previous (sole) trustee was a trust corporation and the new (sole) trustee is also a trust corporation. The trust was registered on the TRS and the previous trustee/agent has updated the TRS to show our trust corporation as the new trustee. However, I have been unable to create and link a govt gateway ID to the trust in order to authorise the new agent, because there is already a govt gateway ID linked to the trust, i.e. the one for the previous trustee. I have spent a happy hour on the phone to HMRC without success and am hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
The trust enquiry line (tel 0300 123 1072) told me I needed to contact the online services helpdesk (tel 0300 200 3600) and ask them to break the link between the existing govt gateway ID and the trust. After two failed attempts, I was told by the online services helpdesk that they donât understand the question, and that I need to go back to the trust enquiry line. Before I brace myself to do that, however, I wondered whether anyone has had success on this and which number they called? It must surely be a relatively common situation.
We wrote to HMRC to ask them to unlink the Gateway of an existing trust so we could claim it. They actioned this fairly promptly, given the well publicised issues in contacting HMRC.
Why do you need a new GG a/c for the trust? Shouldnât the old trustee simply give you the account name and password? If that happened you would need to change the email address linked to the GG a/c, which is probably as difficult as trying to link a new GG a/c.
As the GG a/c is specific to the trust and not to the trustee, surely it âbelongsâ to the trust?
I took the âyouâ in this sense to mean the lead trustee. The lead trustee will need a new government gateway for each trust. Once they have one they then use it to claim the trust record in question as the lead trustee.
I appreciate what you are saying, and agree the way it is designed doesnât make it very easy to swap lead trustee, but unless you can convince the old trustee to give you the lead trustee account, which will necessarily mean giving you details of the account name and password, as well as changing the two factor ID they use to login that links to them personally and not the trust as an entity (and which is certainly not possible if the old lead trustee loses capacity/drops dead/refuses to engage once they have come off the trust), then we are back to having to ask HMRC to turn off the link so the new trustees can make another one.
I think we can all agree itâs clearly not a well designed system.
Hi there. I have the same situation and havenât been able to come up with a workable solution. I have written to HMRC to ask them to unlink the government gateway account for the trust (in the hope I can then create a new one and claim the trust.) I havenât had a reply yet but will let you know if this works. I was not able to do this over the phone (the main trusts line told me to contact the online services helpdesk who did not understand the question and just kept telling me 'weâre not tax trained.'Nightmare.)