Bare trusts: A halfway house for tax planning

Bare trusts can be seen as the poor relation in the world of trusts: simple, unambitious and limited in their scope. However, they are a surprisingly useful tool in tax and financial planning, and it pays to be aware of their uses. A bare trust is, in a sense, a halfway house between a full trust and outright ownership. The legal control rests with the trustees and they have the usual trustee responsibilities but ownership for tax and many other purposes is with the beneficiary. A bare trust can arise in different ways: • It may come about unknowingly where, say, a parent simply h...