Guidance: When HMRC will issue a penalty charge for not registering or maintaining a trust

If you’re a trustee of a trust within the scope of the trust registration service, you need to:

1. Register your trust with HMRC.

2. Keep the information held on the service up to date.

If you fail to take either of these steps within a given time limit, HMRC can charge you a fixed penalty of £5,000.

We will not charge any interest on penalties.

When HMRC will issue a penalty

Registering a trust is a new requirement and we recognise that trustees may not be familiar with the process. We will not charge you a penalty if we find out that you’ve failed to register or to maintain a trust, as long as:

• this was not deliberate behaviour
• you take action to correct this within the time limit we set

We will only charge you a penalty if we decide you deliberately failed to register a trust or to update its details.

We’ll decide on whether to charge penalties on a case-by-case basis.

What you need to do

We’ll send you a penalty letter if we find out that either:

• you’ve not registered a trust that should be registered
• your trust’s information is out of date on the register

The letter will tell you what you need to do and will give you a time limit to take action.

Paying a penalty

You can make a payment on a penalty by:

• Direct Debit
• using our online service and your bank details
• bank transfer
• credit or debit card
• cheque

If you disagree with a penalty charge

You can request a review or appeal against a penalty if you do not agree with our decision.