Bob Gauvreau explains that a trust isn't a separate legal person but an agreement that owns assets, usually through a corporation. Trusts file a T3 return and let business owners hold corporate ownership and manage assets for tax planning, not as traditional trust funds.
Chapters
So we want to understand how to set up a trust, or when we think of a trust, what does that actually mean? Sometimes it's a trust fund where we have beneficiaries that we want to set up and make sure are financially taken care of in the future. Let's talk about a trust. What is a trust? Well, it's actually not a separate legal entity. It's not an individual. It's actually just really an agreement, but it does have a separate tax filing called a T3 or a trust return. Now, why would we set up a trust? Well, a trust is essentially an agreement that says this trust or this agreement owns something. So if we think of a corporation, for example, a trust can own a corporation. It can be the main shareholder inside a corporation. Typically, we don't have trust owning any assets. There's no assets owned inside a trust. It's owned in another entity or by another being. But what we would probably try and do is any assets you have would be inside a corporation owned by this trust.