Cracking reply, thank you Katherine Webber. I will keep Birketts name in mind if I ever need professional help - I know Birketts are genuine and competent because I have come across the name a few times, and never in a bad way.
So many people seem to have come to same conclusion as both of us, from either a personal or professional point of view. I am currently writing a letter of complaint to hmrc. I have form in complaining.
I today managed to get through to hmrc helpline where, for once, I got some help and Gareth stated I should do what you state. So you fill in an online form and then fill the bits you cannot fit in on a piece of paper to your own design. Excuse me? Have hmrc heard of Kafka? What should clearly have happened (as I hope all readers will agree) is that hmrc should have realised many, many problems, pulled form, reset the whole system and delayed for a year. If you don’t do this, Kafkaesque outcomes always result such as guidance form (full marks to CIOT for making hmrc official guidance readily available) saying you “can” fill in date of death in a passport expiry date box, and same guidance stating that telephone number for settlor not required whereas online form states it is required. Even for a deceased settlor!
I urge all professionals to complain. Your complaints may carry more weight than my amateur rants.
Form has been designed by someone who is obviously not a trustee. Although I am an unemployed amateur (with all the failings that brings) I do have extensive personal practical experience, knowledge and expertise in discretionary trusts. As well as asset management, tax avoidance, executorship and all the rest of it.
Main problem with the on-line form (that is requiring all beneficiaries, both capital and income, sometimes over decades) is that you can only fit ten individual beneficiaries in. Then you have to resort to paper and post, like Katherine says. So what happens the next year when another great grandchild of settlor is born and I decide (with my fellow trustees) to bung child £12k capital cash? Will online form (that has to be confirmed each year remember, even if there are no changes) accept more than ten beneficiaries after online form has been submitted? If not, will I have to write hmrc with details of a new beneficiary? Like Katherine says, how are you going to keep abreast of an online registration, as a trustee, if some of your additions are not even shown online? Whole situation is utterly impossible. Guidance is drivel. Does guidance tell me what to do if more than ten beneficiaries? No. Did hmrc tell me in four telephone calls? No. I have wasted days on this - it must be worse for you professionals with dozens of clients to register.
What a debacle. Form is insulting. Question and answer nature of guidance is insulting. System does not work - many small, ordinary, bog standard discretionary trusts will have more than ten beneficiaries. Many trustees will be frustrated - or indeed professional agents acting on behalf of their client trustees will be frustrated. Life is simple. Only action in such a circumstance is to delete the system and start again with a form designed by someone with experience of being a trustee.
Is whole exercise purely a revenue raising one, I wonder? After all many trustees will not realise their obligations. And hmrc have not informed them by flagging up on their hmrc SA account for trusts. It stinks.
And what is point of me having to tell hmrc (again) of what was transferred into trust
I blame hmrc commissioners for this debacle.
Kind regards to Katherine and all professionals who are struggling with this onerous, unacceptable, impossible, Kafkaesque online TRS. Good luck all.
Brian Smith