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Professional trustee service

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Overview Estate & inheritance tax planning Family wealth Mortgages and financing Non-resident and non-domiciled services Offshore trusts Probate Professional trustee service Trusts Wealth management

Managing a trust requires expertise, diligence, integrity and unwavering commitment. If your family has a trust, you will appreciate how complex and time consuming the administration and tax compliance can be.

By appointing a BKL trustee with a professional background in accounting and tax, you will receive a personalised, independent and expert perspective on your trust. From aiding your decision-making to ensuring the future security of your family’s wealth. BKL are here to support you every step of the way.

Our trust experts have extensive experience of acting as professional trustees either alongside family members or as part of the BKL Trust Corporation. They participate in trustee meetings and provide specialised advice on tax and succession planning whenever needed, recognising the importance of combining technical expertise with emotional intelligence.

Our trust team build an indepth understanding of family structure and wealth, so that you benefit from bespoke advice on your property and business interests and ambitions. We can help you by:

  • Providing expert advice from our knowledge of accounting, tax and compliance requirements
  • Reducing risk and potential conflicts of interest
  • Running the trust more efficiently
  • Providing strategic guidance and tax-efficient planning, including inheritance tax and capital gains tax
  • Ensuring your annual trust compliance is dealt with efficiently
  • Managing and protecting your family assets

Case study: How a professional trustee can make a difference

The extensive tax expertise that a professional trustee brings can help you to avoid problems later on. One example encountered by our team involved the winding up of a trust created in the 1970s.

The trustees, who were also the settlors, had been in place since the creation. Having reached their 80s, they wanted less responsibility and simpler personal affairs, so they were considering winding up the trust and distributing the assets to their children and grandchildren.

Under the terms of the deed, the beneficiaries were their four children who received an entitlement to income at 25 years old, but also received an entitlement to capital when they reached 35 years old. The first child reached 35 in the early 2000s; the fourth child reached 35 in the mid 2010s.

The trustees were aware of the income entitlements, but not the capital. Therefore under the terms of the deeds, the trust came to an end when the fourth child reached 35. This meant that both the beneficiaries and the trustees had been filing their tax returns incorrectly.

We were able to assist with correcting their tax positions. This required voluntary disclosures to HMRC for the beneficiaries and an overpayment claim for the trustees.

However, a professional trustee would have been aware of the entitlement dates, and could have given advice and undertaken planning in advance of those dates.

This is one of many examples our specialists see that involve missed entitlement, accumulation or perpetuity periods for a trust.

 

 

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