Declaration of Trust - Beneficial vs Legal ownership

[Stuart Allenby]

Morning everyone,

Beneficial vs Legal ownership, is it the same thing??  We have a BTL property that we purchased as tenants in common with a 50/50 ownership share.  We are looking at drawing up a declaration of trust to enable us to split the income, as others have done here, 99/1% to better use our personal tax situations.  Looking at Form 17 from HMRC, they talk about beneficial ownership of the property, yet we own the property (I assume the legal ownership) as 50/50 shares.  When completing the deed, are we changing the legal ownership as well as the beneficial ownership when we do this??  Is the beneficial ownership and the legal ownership the same thing??!!  Any references that I could read up on would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Debbie Franklin]

legal ownership is registered title 

hmrc work on beneficial ownership so if you are changing via a declaration of trust you are changing the beneficial ownership not the legal ownership 

[Stuart Allenby]

Thanks Debbie, that puts our mind at rest!  We did speak to a solicitor who seemed to suggest that the legal ownership would change which is why I posed the question in the first place because we were sure that wouldn't be the case.  Thanks again