This week I sent out a letter welcoming everyone back for another busy year in 2014. Looking back at 2013, I noted that my role was marked by three Cs: Communication – Not just telling our membership about our mission and values but taking on board their own visions for the future of STEP Connections… Read More Happy New Year from Hélène Anne Lewis, Chair, STEP Worldwide
As a professional body, STEP seeks to promote the highest standards of practice amongst its members. In an increasingly regulated world, it has long seemed to me odd that the preparation of the most sensitive document most people will ever sign, their will, is almost entirely unregulated in England & Wales. Anyone can do it,… Read More Will Code Welcome News
For private client/trust practitioners, the draft 2014 Finance Bill clauses published on 10 December 2013 contained no great surprises, and were mainly interesting for what they did not include. We will have to wait until early next year for details of the proposed capital gains tax (CGT) charge on the disposal of UK residential property… Read More Confirmed and Unsaid: Looking at the 2014 Finance Bill
I welcomed David Cameron’s recent letter to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rumpoy, rejecting calls to include trusts in the public registries of beneficial owners that the UK is proposing for companies. In the letter the Prime Minister noted the need to ‘recognise the important differences between companies and trusts’ in this… Read More Preserving the confidential nature of trusts
In recent years, we have seen almost daily developments chipping away at long-established boundaries of financial privacy. Before the global recession gave this process real impetus, who would have thought that offshore financial centres would sign automatic exchange of information agreements? The UK’s proposed public registry of company beneficial ownership may prove to be a… Read More Is financial privacy coming to an end?
In the summer, I flagged up that Austria on 10 July had signed up to the Hague Convention XXXV of 13 January 2000 on the International Protection of Adults, which had then been ratified by the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Scotland and Switzerland. Last month, less than three after signing, Austria ratified Convention… Read More Time for a Viennese whirl?
As people who have spent at least an hour in a room with me will know, I have never been backward about coming forward and so am pleased to see so many like-minded individuals get involved in STEP’s 2021 member consultation. It is refreshing for an organisation to open up the floor to its members… Read More Have your say
With around 750 members responding in detail to the STEP 2021 consultation members’ survey, we can be statistically comfortable that we have an accurate snapshot of member opinion. We are starting detailed analysis but what are the issues that immediately jump out? Members overwhelmingly want STEP to have a stronger relationship with employers – 87 per… Read More Big issues about STEP – the 2021 consultation
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus famously tells Cassius: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current… Read More Cross-border incapacity on a flood tide?
Reading HMRC’s on-going consultation ‘Simplifying Charges on Trusts’ does not give much hope for simplification. Of the key proposals, ignoring previous lifetime transfers and non-relevant property in relation to trust exits and ten year charges, is clearly attractive. However, while the idea of splitting the nil rate band between every trust a settlor creates -even… Read More On HMRC’s Charges on Trusts consultation
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