NFA Assignment Sheet is Not a Schedule A
Question: Do I have to list all of the NFA items in my NFA trust on the Schedule A that I send in to the ATF?
Answer: The short answer is no, just list the item being purchased or the major components of the item being manufactured. The longer answer is you are confused about what you are sending to the ATF.
You are not sending a Schedule A to the ATF. You are sending an assignment form. Technically you should not have to submit an assignment form because (if you are administering your trust correctly) the NFA item is being purchased by the trust – no assignment to the trust is necessary because the trust/trustee purchased and owns the NFA item from the beginning. However, I am told that if you do not include the assignment form, the ATF will bounce your application back to you because the BATFE or ATF has confused the concept of funding a trust with the requirement that a trust be funded to be valid. An assignment sheet or schedule are documents that evidence funding a trust.
I think the problem is that many “form” trusts and trust instructions tell the trustee to keep track of all the trust assets on an additional schedule and attach that schedule to the trust. Typically, that schedule is called Schedule A. It is not a bad idea to keep a list of all items in the trust. However, the ATF does not require a complete list of trust assets each time you submit a form 1 or form 4.
We have choosen to use an assignment sheet instead of Schedule A so that you can include all of your firearms in the trust we have prepared without having to send a list of all of your guns to the ATF each time you want to make a purchase. This prevents that ATF from creating a de facto registration of your firearms.
The last page of your memorandum regarding NFA specific issues is typically the assignment form required by the ATF. This is not a Schedule A. Only the NFA item being purchased or the major components of the NFA item being manufactured needs to be listed on the assignment form and attached to the ATF form 1 or Form 4.
Remember if you are you are using a Form 1 it does not matter who makes the payments or purchases the components. With a Form 4, the trust should purchase the NFA firearm but it does not matter who makes the 200 payment to the AFT.
