Trust Registration Service requirements: which trusts must register with HMRC

Who has to register a trust with HMRC

Nearly all of them. Since the rules were extended in 2020, every UK resident express trust must register on HMRC's Trust Registration Service (TRS) unless it falls within a specific excluded category, and that obligation applies whether or not the trust owes a penny of tax. An express trust simply means one deliberately created, in a lifetime deed or in a will, rather than one imposed by a court or by statute. On top of that, any trust that becomes liable for UK Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Inheritance Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax or the Scottish and Welsh land taxes must register as a taxable trust, even if it is not UK resident. The full rules are set out in HMRC's Register a Trust as a Trustee guidance. What follows is general information rather than legal or financial advice, so treat it as a starting point, not a substitute for professional help with your own trust.

The registration net is wide, but it matters most in estate planning for one reason: trusts created by wills. Many families only discover the TRS exists when a parent's will leaves assets in trust and, two years after the death, a registration deadline quietly arrives.

The main trusts that must register

• Discretionary trusts, whether set up in lifetime or by a will.
• Life interest trusts, including the property protection trusts commonly written into couples' wills.
• Bare trusts, such as accounts or investments held by adults for children, unless an exclusion applies.
• Non-UK trusts that acquire UK land or have a UK trustee entering a business relationship in the UK.
• Any trust with a UK tax liability, which also brings reporting of the trust's assets into scope.

The excluded list, known as Schedule 3A trusts, covers situations where registration would add nothing: charitable trusts, trusts for bereaved minors and 18-to-25 trusts set up for children who lose a parent, co-ownership trusts where joint owners of a property hold it for themselves, trusts of jointly held bank accounts, and life insurance policies written in trust that only pay out on death, terminal illness or disability. An excluded trust loses its exclusion if it becomes liable for UK tax, at which point it must register as a taxable trust.

The will-trust exclusion: two years from death

Wills create trusts more often than people realise: a gift to a grandchild "at 25", a life interest for a surviving partner, a discretionary trust of the residue. HMRC's Trust Registration Service Manual at TRSM23020 confirms that a trust created by a will, holding only property from the deceased's estate, is excluded from registration for two years from the date of death. If everything is paid out and the trust is wound up within those two years, it never needs to register at all. If the trust is still in existence at the second anniversary of the death, it becomes registrable and the trustees must register it.

Take Priya and Marcus, siblings acting as trustees under their father's will, which left £80,000 in trust for his ten-year-old granddaughter until she turns 21. Their father died on 10 March 2025. Nothing needs to happen on the TRS until 10 March 2027, but because the trust will plainly still be running then, the sensible move is to diarise registration well before that date. The period during which the executors are simply administering the estate does not count as a trust at all, so ordinary estate administration never triggers registration on its own.

Deadlines: the 90-day rule

Since 1 September 2022 the standard deadline, confirmed at TRSM40010, is that a registrable non-taxable trust must be registered within 90 days of being created or otherwise becoming registrable. For a will trust, the clock effectively starts when the two-year exclusion runs out. Taxable trusts created on or after 6 April 2021 likewise register within 90 days of becoming liable for tax, and older taxable trusts had earlier deadlines tied to Self Assessment dates. The same 90-day window applies to keeping the record accurate: changes to trustees, beneficiaries or other registered details must be updated within 90 days of the change.

Penalties for missing the deadline

HMRC's approach, set out at TRSM80020, is warning first, penalty later. There are no automatic fines for late registration. When HMRC identifies an unregistered trust it writes to the trustees or their agent asking them to register within a set time. Penalties are then applied case by case, and a £5,000 penalty can be charged on the lead trustee where a trust still is not registered after repeated warnings, or where inaccurate details are supplied and never corrected. In practice, registering as soon as you spot the obligation, even late, is the reliable way to stay out of penalty territory.

Registration and what comes next

Registration itself is done online through the Register a Trust service on GOV.UK. The lead trustee sets up a Government Gateway organisation account for the trust and provides details of the settlor, trustees and beneficiaries, plus asset values for taxable trusts. An accountant or solicitor can be authorised to do this as agent. Bear in mind that TRS registration is only the reporting side of trust compliance: trusts holding relevant property also face their own Inheritance Tax regime, covered in our full guide to the 10-year charge on trusts, and the wider context sits in our inheritance tax pillar guide.

If you are writing a will that creates a trust, it is worth knowing from the outset that your future trustees will inherit this admin. Our making a will checklist helps you capture trust provisions and trustee choices alongside everything else a solid will needs. And if you are already a trustee staring at a two-year deadline, an estate planning specialist can confirm whether your trust is registrable, handle the TRS entry and set up the ongoing reporting so the record stays clean year after year.