I’m dying to avoid it if I can
I’m probably a prime person to suffer from IHT when I (and the missus) croak it, mainly because we have a fairly nice house on the London borders. But there’s a few reasons why I couldn’t give a monkeys about IHT;
1) All assets will go to the missus tax free, so she’ll be all good.
2) I’d like the kids not to be gifted a huge amount of money so they lose purpose, but rather they worked for there own future.
3) If you want to give it to the kids, do it well in advance and you’ll avoid IHT
4) I’ll be dead, kaput. Finito. My tax concerns will be somewhat tempered by this event.
I’d rather be angry about tax while alive and can spend it.
I find it strange that so many older people get so wound up about IHT. It seems like the Conservative party and supporters are absolutely obsessed about it.
I’m dying to avoid it if I can
I gather equity release is becoming another way of reducing IHT, as some pension funds aren’t subject to it. Is that right?
If there's you and your wife and a house, that's in excess of £850,000 before you pay a penny in tax. We did this last year when my mother died and my father moved in with us as he didn't want to live on his own. We didn't pay much at all in the end. As for giving it away early, it's got to be seven years and you can't benefit from it.
If he'd given or lent us anything towards our house, then moved tax would have been due again unless it was fully discharged.
Last edited by M4tt; 28th April 2018 at 23:07.
What do mean by giving it away early ? Is it gifting property to your children ?
Very complex subject and not really something you can cover in a thread. Residential nil rate band is very easy to lose and many people - including supposed professionals - get many elements wrong. Some people are less bothered than others and I get that, however, others spend their lives paying as little tax as possible. These people then do not estate plan and take a big hit. However, the big estate reducer now is the cost of long term care.
Historically informed wealthy people created lots of debt to reduce their estate liabilities, however, HMRC have cracked down on creation of false debt. In my experience, at present, more people who are asset rich are looking towards lifetime mortgages or long term interest only mortgages - these are slightly better than equity release.
The OP asked why it is hated not how to avoid it.
It’s hated because it is taking an asset that has been bought with taxed paid money, and then taxing it again - at the expense of the children of the prents that actually worked for it!
Personally, I’d leave my kids as much as possible, whether that was £100k, £1m or £100m. They can decide whether or not they want to keep it once it’s in their pockets and not the government deciding what they want to do with it.
It's just a matter of time...
Yes Asset rich is the way to go imo.
It's only the 'children's money' because that's how inheritance law has evolved, it's not a fundamental law of nature that it has to be like this.
Society could decide an estate 'died' with a person.
It isn’t a tax based on any principle (eg that you’ve had income or gains). It’s “How much have you got left? Right, we’ll have some of that.”
Why is wishing to give your estate away to family on your death so reprehensible that it deserves to be more heavily taxed than spending it? (And obviously I’m referring to the marginal part of your estate in excess of reliefs.)
If the concern is people making untaxed property gains on their homes, tax that. IHT is a blunt instrument that takes no account of what tax has already been borne on the funds comprising the estate.
The rules discriminate against single people and those without children.
If the late Duke of Westminster, with wealth of (from memory) c£10 billion, left his fortune with minimal IHT liability, why should the less well off pay?
There’s a current consultation on IHT and it’s bizarre that a virtue is made of the small % of estates that suffer it. It’s either a fair tax or not - whether it affects a few or many people is irrelevant.
I think the issue of IHT is basically the same in the U.S. as in the U.K. There are two points of view: that of the family, and that of "society." IMO, both perspectives have merit and neither are 'right' or 'wrong.'
The parents and their offspring usually believe that the wealth accumulated by the parents is owned by the family and should not be retaxed just because part of the family is now deceased. One of the principal reasons the parents sought to accumulate the wealth was to enrich the lives of their children. Hence, as members of the family unit, the children are co-owners of the estate (unless otherwise stated).
Society looks at a person's wealth much differently: it was the parent(s) who worked to accumulate the wealth. That person's offspring are no more deserving of a proper start in life than poor children. It is up to the government to establish a tax that will at least make some effort toward leveling the playing field before the game even starts for the next generation.
Or something like that!
Deserving? Doesn’t really come into it does it? Surely everyone ‘deserves’ the best life they could possibly have but it doesn’t work like that does it?
If I work my roe out to make sure my son has a better start in life than I had isn’t that honourable and what a parent should strive for?
Do you prefer for the state to take everything and everyone start from scratch?
IHT planning has been one of my specialisms for the best part of 30 years.
Originally I decided to learn the tax inside-out because it was quite a new tax (in current form) and the legislation was a slim volume.
In recent years (particularly the last 10-15) a relatively huge amount of amendments have been grafted onto that legislation and it is now very complex.
There has been a definite policy change towards lowering the real/effective threshold so that many more estates suffer IHT. It used to be a tax on the wealthy but now is a tax on Middle England. It is now a bigger revenue raiser than it ever was.
Many (but not all) of the marketed and packaged tax planning solutions have been closed or rendered ineffective. For the record, I’m the author of what has been possibly the most commercially successful such solution as I devised the now-standard form of “discounted gift trust” in 1997 which is still being used.
That said the motivation to reduce liability to IHT is often not strong amongst clients, in my opinion and experience partly because they don’t want to confront their own mortality and partly because they can’t stand the thought of losing significant effective control of part of their estate, as required for much IHT planning.
Most clients will happily put off the problem until it is too late. As a consequence few tax advisers have become wealthy if they chose to specialise in this tax.
This is my issue with it even though I won’t have an issue as my family don’t have much wealth at all and neither do I at this stage
However I’m uncomfortable with the fact that you pay tax on your earnings, tax on the things you buy with those earnings or the investments you make and then that same money is taxed when you leave it to someone after you die
Wait until you have to plan for French inheritance rules!
The asset inheritance is crazy, and the taxing and reliefs are fierce.
You end up with horrible dilution of ownership.
France, close by geography, far away in ideology
Well said and let's be clear there may well have been multiple layers of tax already paid before IHT where for instance income that has been taxed was then used to invest in an asset (say a buy to let) that was subjected to income tax on rent, an SDLT surcharge and the CGT on exit. Even savings attracts tax.
Just to add none of us know how long we will live or what our circumstances will be in old age. It's an aging population and all IHT does is encourage people to either spend or gift away money at a time they consider to be sufficiently ahead of expected mortality to not get caught by IHT rules with the potential to then become yet another "cost" to the state if they live to an age that they need to go into a care home but no longer have the funds to pay. For those that have been fortunate enough not to have been through the process with elderly relatives, the cost of nursing homes is simply eye watering.
How such does Inheritance Tax contribute to total revenue? <1%?
I guess the most hated tax is the one you pay. PAYE and NI for most, by far the major source of revenue.
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One thought is that without IT wealth will over time become concentrated within a small portion of the population who will effectively use the country as a playground served and waited on by the poor.
This situation has in the past led to revolutions so best avoided!
Recent indirect experience of French inheritance tax was at the 70% rate.
Care homes are costly as has been said. Try £1,000 per week for dementia care.
The problem with taxes is that governments of all hues spend them on items that some will always be against. Some will look at the £1,000,000 cruise missile just fired and ask if that could not have been better spent on feeding those in the foodbank queue, whilst others will consider the latter slackers and their kids probably deserve being there, and that we should have a strong foreign policy. We all want government not to waste our money, and subsidised alcohol whilst at work and luxury bulletproof cars may be unnecessary, but others may disagree.
I don't know the percentages, but last year the receipts hit £5.2bn.
I think the 'hatred' stems in part from the fact that it is seen as being paid for by the middle classes, the poor don't get hit by it and the rich can avoid it by giving assets away and/or paying advisers for schemes that get around it.
Dying with your last shilling in your pocket is the ideal solution, IMO. ;-)
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Why is it so hated?
If you'd seen your family being forced the sell homes & commercial property they worked hard to build up over a lifetime (whilst paying business rates, VAT & income tax) just to pay even more tax, you'd understand.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Around 7/10 of 1% then.
I guess it could be scrapped and a bit more put on tobacco, alcohol, betting, APD or landfill, or it could be seen to be a reservoir to be tapped.
I think it's also the middle class that stump up most of PAYE and NI and are the easiest to collect from.
I've had the very same idea as you. I've worked out how much I have, likely life span and how much I can spend per year to have nought left on my final day. I just need to get my other half to buy my share of the house, now, and then a final stretch of profligacy and decadence.
I can remember a lot of new taxes, but can't remember them removing any taxes, at least not without an immediate replacement- luxury tax to VaT.
IHT is a daylight robbery. Just because HMG can. Hence if ppl can do something about it they will.
Last edited by VDG; 29th April 2018 at 12:49.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
I think donating wealth to a political party is a way to avoid IHT. Funny that!
I think it’s hated because it’s double taxation and levelled at the estate, not the beneficiaries
So if you had say 4 kids and a £1m estate, divvying up the estate equally puts all 4 under the IHT threashold, but still the estate has to pay IHT
So when people say ‘why should the kids get a free stack of cash’ it’s a misnomer, because the tax is applied for the act of dying, not what happens to the money (bar political/charitable donation)
I’m not an expert, happy to be corrected
Irrespective of pro/con inheritance tax, the “it’s a double tax/tax on money already taxed” argument is stupid. We’re taxed on already-taxed income all the time ie VAT on just about everything, council tax, duty (a tax in all but name) etc paid out of our net income.
You’re born, you’re taxed, you die (and if you’re unlucky you’re taxed again).
IHT probably least of worries as the care-funding battle will become increasingly vicious between people/families and councils. The government will do all it can to run down someone's assets to the minimum and if it can't do that then it'll have 40% of the amount above £325k. Seems the golden years and dying is an expensive business.
Surely Stamp Duty is at least equally hated? Due to the price of houses it’s become an absurdly high cost. There’s no logic to disincentivising people from downsizing, moving to larger houses as their families grow, moving to find work, or simply from living where they want. The only reason to keep it is that they are absolutely raking it in, but I can’t see any other logic to it.
From a population point of view - it's a complete non-issue and rather than being most hated is an irrelevance to most.
Last edited by Alansmithee; 29th April 2018 at 20:26.
Jesus.....why all the fuss?
IHT is the ONLY voluntary tax in the UK.
It's NOT compulsary people.
You either get it sorted and pay NO tax, or you prevaricate, bury your head in the sand and cough up.
As simple as.
Move on.
Tax on net wealth that has already been taxed - it’s theft.
Last edited by Chinnock; 29th April 2018 at 21:13.
Usually you (choose to) do something to trigger a tax liability - buy something, earn something, sell something. Broadly, IHT only requires you to die (at a particular time and subject to what you may or may not have done previously - spending, giving away, tax planning, etc.).
Last edited by David_D; 29th April 2018 at 21:49.
Indeed, I mentioned the Duke of Westminster whose c£10bn estate passed to his heirs without a 40% chunk going to HMRC, as I understand it.
Others have mentioned that the very wealthy can largely “opt out” of IHT which massively reduces the take there would otherwise be.
Kind of you to say so Stephen. To tell the truth at the time it was a “happy accident”. It didn’t make me much money but led to me setting up in business on my own.
It’s surprising these products haven’t been closed down, especially as the forerunners of the modern DGTs were stamped on with anti-avoidance rules in 1986.
I'm not sure what defines the 'very wealthy' but the IHT net is catching far more people now than ever before. Primarily the value of the family home, but when you add in investments, savings, pension funds, etc - and the potential capital from life insurance policies - there'll be more and more of us liable for this tax in the future.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
It's hated because privileged people do not like the idea of anything that helps level the playing field between the haves and have-nots. They have a vested interest in reducing social mobility, something which IHT increases.
I and my peers are children of baby-boomers and by far the greatest influential factor on how our lives will pan out financially (and whether we will own a home) is whether our parents are leaving a large inheritance or not.
I and my friends all have similar upbringings, similar educations and similarly paid careers with similar trajectories. It is absolutely absurd that none of the above matters in the slightest in the face of our parents' varying levels of wealth and the corollary inheritances we will one day receive. I am one of the more fortunate but two of my friends will never ever be able to buy a house in the South East, that is not something which should be decided by the lottery of who their parents are.
It's not as if people who are due a large inheritance aren't already disproportionately privileged throughout their life and more likely to have had a better education, more stable family environment, less stress due to financial security. Again, I am someone who has had the benefit of all those things but I look across my shoulder to friends who are more capable than me and they will also always be more worse off because of the lottery of whose kids they are, anything that levels that, like IHT, is a good thing.
Admittedly the above is a broader point and not just IHT specific as anyone with their head screwed on knows how to get around it with the correct succession planning but IHT should not be something that is hated.