I say Settlor...
The popularity of lifetime trust giving in the UK has been on a
downward trend since April 2006 when the Labour government
introduced reforms specifically aimed at stopping trusts
"being used to shelter wealth from inheritance tax".
Subsequent UK governments continued in the same vein through the
blurring of legitimate tax avoidance with criminal tax evasion, the
introduction of new criminal offences targeting wealth advisors and
increases to the tax rates paid by trustees.
Beneficial ownership registers have been established to record
who can benefit from trusts, who ultimately owns or controls
companies and more registers are in the pipeline for foreign owners
of UK residential property. Some of these registers are freely
available to the public and others, for the time being at least,
are only available to regulatory and law enforcement agencies.
