Tax & IHT guidance - Intelligent Money Private Clients

Tax & IHT guidance - Intelligent Money Private Clients

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Steve H

5,283 posts

195 months

Wednesday 16th November 2022
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IIRC, if he dies within 7 years then the gift will be at least partly counted towards IHT, not sure if there’s any other stuff you can get taxed for there though?

Intelligent Money

Original Poster:

506 posts

63 months

Thursday 17th November 2022
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rfisher said:
Another IHT question to ponder;

Mr Blobby downsizes his house and is left with £1mill in his current account.

He buys a Ferrari for £1mill and then (at some point) transfers ownership to his daughter.

She sells the car and uses the money to buy a house and a Ford Fiesta (future classic).

Should Mr Blobby, or his daughter Belinda, expect a knock on the door from HMRC / BiB anytime soon?
Hi fisher

Assuming that Mr Blobby fully gifted the car, i.e. did not just transfer it in name only while continuing to drive it and enjoy it himself, then at the point of gifting the 7 year clock starts ticking, The gift is the value of the car at the time of gifting. If death occurs within 7 years a % of the value will be added back into the estate and IHT may be payable. After 7 years it is outside the estate so no IHT is applicable.

Cheers

Nik

rfisher

5,024 posts

283 months

Friday 18th November 2022
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Thanks Nik thumbup.

Armitage.Shanks

2,276 posts

85 months

Wednesday 4th January 2023
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Nik, firstly thanks for the excellent advice on this thread, most of which goes over my head as I'm not a powerfully built PH director type.

A question on IHT leaving the estate to spouse v using the £325k tax free amount.

I was of a mind to leave a significant proportion of my estate to my daughter on my death which could amount to above the £325k limit. But having read through the thread and looking elsewhere I question whether it would be better to just leave everything as is to my wife so she has the full £650k? That said the then total value of the estate will still create a significant IHT liability.

It seems to me there are no easy solutions here to defray the 40% IHT unless going down the 7yr gifting route, or spending it?

Intelligent Money

Original Poster:

506 posts

63 months

Thursday 5th January 2023
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Hi Armitage.shanks

I am glad that you have found the thread helpful and thank you for the feedback.

Using your allowance to pass some of the Estate to your daughter gives her earlier access to assets and means that any future growth on it is outside of the Estate from that point forward. This is obviously only a benefit if the asset grows at a rate above any increase in the IHT allowance and assumes that you wife doesn’t need the assets that you would give to your daughter.

Gifting on first death was more frequently used when the IHT allowance died with you, there is less benefit now that any unused allowance is transferred to the surviving spouse.

You also have £175k of residential property allowance so dependent on the value of your home your daughter could receive £1 million of asset before IHT kicks in.

I covered the basics of IHT planning in a previous post, detailed below.

Use of the 7-year rule (PET) or gifting £3k p.a. are often the starting point, this reduces the estate and puts the funds in the hands of the beneficiary, who can then use them to pay any future IHT bill.


Cheers

Nik





IHT is a large area to cover generically but here is a starter for 10!

IHT is an area that has many wrinkles and off shoots but this should set out the basic principles.

In very broad terms IHT is a balance between giving your assets away and maintaining control and benefiting from them.
The more control that you maintain over your assets the less tax efficient the solution is likely to be and if you look to gift and maintain control the more expensive the solution is likely to be.
i.e. if you simply gift the assets and then live 7 years there is no IHT liability so it is very tax efficient and cost effective but you have no control or benefit from the assets you have gifted.

Basic Principles

Beyond gifts between spouses and some additional allowances the assets of an individual’s estate above £325,000 are subject to IHT.
There is a further allowance of £175,000 for property that is passed to Children or Grandchildren.

The main allowances that are available to reduce the value of the estate and any IHT bill are the gifting allowances. These can be broadly spilt into immediate relief and potential relief.

The immediate relief options are limited to :

£3,000 p.a. (you can carry forward an additional years allowance if it wasn’t used)

Gifts of £250 per person, (excluding any individual that you gifted the £3,000 allowance to)

Gifts from regular income that do not affect your standard of living. The rules for this exemption are quite detailed for example, these gifts must be regular i.e. payments into a regular savings plan or life insurance policy.

Potential Relief (Potentially Exempt Transfers)

This relief is available on any gift that is made. The gift becomes exempt from IHT 7 years after it was made. There is a sliding scale of relief given from year 3 to year 7, know as taper relief so if you die between year 3 and 7 there is a reduction in tax payable and after year 7 the gift is exempt from IHT.

Any planning to reduce an IHT liability is based around use of these allowances.
The use of trusts can allow any asset to be gifted without it passing directly to the beneficiary at that time or to split an asset between its current value and any future increase in value. This can be used to “cap” the value at its current level rather than have future increases in value add to any IHT liability.
Broadly speaking if the person gifting the asset into a trust maintains some benefit from the asset then it is unlikely to be efficient on reducing IHT.

It is this area that becomes very dependent on the type of asset to be gifted, the control that the person gifting wants to maintain and their need for any on-going benefit from the asset.

For example if an individual was to gift their property either to another individual or a trust and then continue to live in the property without paying a market agreed rent, on death the property is unlikely to be treated as gifted and included at its full value for IHT purposes.

The second consideration is to “insure the liability” This involves putting in place a life insurance policy that pays out on death of the individual whose estate you are looking to protect.

If the individual has enough surplus income to meet the “funded from regular income” criteria then the premium can be paid by them and not be treated as a gift.

The policy can be placed in trust so that the benefits do not form part of the estate and on death pay out enough to either fully pay or contribute towards any IHT bill.

This approach doesn’t try to reduce any IHT bill, but provides a means to pay the bill without using the assets form the estate.

Sometimes a combination of both may be used, for example gifts are made to reduce the value of the estate and reduce the potential tax bill.

If these gifts exceed the annually £3,000 allowance, there will still be a tax liability for 7 years after the gifts are made. You can then use a life insurance policy to cover this 7-year period.

In summary you can either make use of gifting allowances and the 7 year Potentially Exempt Transfer rules to bring the value of the estate under £325,000 or insure to cover the bill that you may be subject to.

When using the gifting route, you can make use of trusts to maintain some level of control of the assets without having a beneficial interest or split the current value of the asset from future growth and so prevent any IHT liability from increasing.


I hope this helps. There are several “wrinkles” and offshoots from these main principles that can be applied given individual circumstances and needs

jimmybell

588 posts

117 months

Thursday 5th January 2023
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Is there any general guidance on options available for those stifled by the pension taper? whether that means allowance is somewhat affected or completely wiped out (down to £4k i think?)

I assume it's pretty much 'max whatever tax free allowance you have' and then funnel towards ISA up to relief limits, and then GIA.

In terms of alternative tax relief/wrappers, things like EIS/VCT exist but they seem pretty high risk for money that would have been in relatively 'normal' investments within pension? I don't know of any other options, and documentation / discussion of them is light in the first place.

Darlo74

284 posts

209 months

Friday 6th January 2023
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jimmybell said:
Is there any general guidance on options available for those stifled by the pension taper? whether that means allowance is somewhat affected or completely wiped out (down to £4k i think?)

I assume it's pretty much 'max whatever tax free allowance you have' and then funnel towards ISA up to relief limits, and then GIA.

In terms of alternative tax relief/wrappers, things like EIS/VCT exist but they seem pretty high risk for money that would have been in relatively 'normal' investments within pension? I don't know of any other options, and documentation / discussion of them is light in the first place.
I think that's right. The only other consideration is if your company provides any contribution. With my company, I contribute 10% of salary and the company matches it. So even accounting for the tax I need to pay above the £4k allowance it's marginally beneficial to me.

oldaudi

1,315 posts

158 months

Saturday 7th January 2023
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Morning,
I can’t find any proper answers on Google and I don’t have a personal tax advisor. I’m PAYE although I do my own tax returns because I pay into a SIPP and I chase the extra tax relief.

As some of you may know my wife died in 2021. I’m still sorting through her pensions , mainly due to the complete incompetence of the two ex-employers I’ve been dealing with. Both related to local councils and governments.

I seem to be almost there but my question is regarding monthly tax payments for children on an inherited pension. There was one lump sum which should be coming to me tax free because it’s classed as out of her estate, but I’ve managed to get this to swerve me completely and get paid to my children’s existing in trust stocks and shares accounts with Hargreaves Lansdown. I didn’t want it to be part of my estate or be classed as a gift to the children. We will see if that really happens later this week.

Alongside this I and the two children will receive a monthly payment. The paperwork was received this morning, mine appears to be taxed which is correct. But theirs is showing a tax deduction too. Should they be paying tax? One is 16 and in full time education at college, the other is 13. I’ve been receiving another monthly pension from one of her other employers for over a year and that’s taxed too.

I want to correct it but also fear the length of time this will take given the slowness of the department’s I’m dealing with.

It’s a not huge numbers, but does show a tax deduction. Is that correct? Thank you

Intelligent Money

Original Poster:

506 posts

63 months

Monday 9th January 2023
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oldaudi said:
Morning,
I can’t find any proper answers on Google and I don’t have a personal tax advisor. I’m PAYE although I do my own tax returns because I pay into a SIPP and I chase the extra tax relief.

As some of you may know my wife died in 2021. I’m still sorting through her pensions , mainly due to the complete incompetence of the two ex-employers I’ve been dealing with. Both related to local councils and governments.

I seem to be almost there but my question is regarding monthly tax payments for children on an inherited pension. There was one lump sum which should be coming to me tax free because it’s classed as out of her estate, but I’ve managed to get this to swerve me completely and get paid to my children’s existing in trust stocks and shares accounts with Hargreaves Lansdown. I didn’t want it to be part of my estate or be classed as a gift to the children. We will see if that really happens later this week.

Alongside this I and the two children will receive a monthly payment. The paperwork was received this morning, mine appears to be taxed which is correct. But theirs is showing a tax deduction too. Should they be paying tax? One is 16 and in full time education at college, the other is 13. I’ve been receiving another monthly pension from one of her other employers for over a year and that’s taxed too.

I want to correct it but also fear the length of time this will take given the slowness of the department’s I’m dealing with.

It’s a not huge numbers, but does show a tax deduction. Is that correct? Thank you
Hi Oldaudi

It is likely to depend on the structure of the payment. From your post is sounds like the payment is from a Defined Benefit scheme and is a dependents pension payment.

This is often enhanced where there are children as well as the a spouse/partner.

If the payment is made to the spouse/partner including the enhancement to support the children then it will taxed as income at the marginal rate for the spouse/partner

If the additional payments for the children are being made directly to the children then it will be taxed as income at their marginal rate. They have a personal allowance £12,570 so the first £12,570 of income should be available tax free. The scheme admin should be able to arrange to pay this gross if the annual income from the scheme is below £12,570 p.a.

Cheers

Nik





jimmybell

588 posts

117 months

Friday 13th January 2023
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Darlo74 said:
jimmybell said:
Is there any general guidance on options available for those stifled by the pension taper? whether that means allowance is somewhat affected or completely wiped out (down to £4k i think?)

I assume it's pretty much 'max whatever tax free allowance you have' and then funnel towards ISA up to relief limits, and then GIA.

In terms of alternative tax relief/wrappers, things like EIS/VCT exist but they seem pretty high risk for money that would have been in relatively 'normal' investments within pension? I don't know of any other options, and documentation / discussion of them is light in the first place.
I think that's right. The only other consideration is if your company provides any contribution. With my company, I contribute 10% of salary and the company matches it. So even accounting for the tax I need to pay above the £4k allowance it's marginally beneficial to me.
I guess something i hadn't considered is my wife's allowance. She's a 20% taxpayer but even that i guess would be preferable to ISA.. so the ordering becomes:

fill my pension allowance, fill my wife's pension allowance, then my ISA until limits, then hers, then GIA.

Intelligent Money

Original Poster:

506 posts

63 months

Saturday 14th January 2023
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jimmybell said:
I guess something i hadn't considered is my wife's allowance. She's a 20% taxpayer but even that i guess would be preferable to ISA.. so the ordering becomes:

fill my pension allowance, fill my wife's pension allowance, then my ISA until limits, then hers, then GIA.
Jimmybell

Filling both pensions also means that you make use of two income tax allowances when you come to draw the benefits.

Cheers

Nik

5pen

1,891 posts

206 months

Wednesday 1st February 2023
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Inheritance tax question. Something I never seem to be able to fully understand.

There has been an event in my family that has made me consider inheritance tax planning for my mother's estate (something that we never thought we'd need to given the likely size of the estate).

Background;

My father died in 2017 and left everything to my mum. Total value of his estate was approximately £225k and £190k of this was his 50% share of the house.

My mother's will grants an equal 50% share of her estate to my brother an me. The house remains the bulk of the estate with an approximate value of £475k-£500k. The remaining assets will add up to a total estate of, I would estimate, of no more than £575k.

The family event I referred to earlier is that my brother has died. My mother's will is worded to handle this possibility and grants the 50% share to his wife.

Previously, I thought that as the bulk of the estate is the house and this is would be passing to her children, then no IHT would be due, but now half of the value of the house is passing to a non-direct descendant, is it something to be considered?

There are two things that I don't fully understand;
1. How much of my father's £325k IHT allowance has passed to my mother?
£325k - £225k + £190k = £290k?
£325k - £225k = £100k?
Something else?

2. I believe, that for the purposes of IHT, my sister-in-law is considered as a direct descendant in terms of being able to inherit the value of the house. Is this understanding correct?

The .gov calculator suggests that there could potentially be IHT due on the estate, but this is quite likely because I do not know how to value the inherited allowance from my father and potentially the value of my mother's home and how much of this is exempt given the situation with my brother no longer being a beneficiary.

If anyone can clarify exactly how IHT would work in the circumstances, I'd be very grateful.

duckson

1,242 posts

182 months

Wednesday 1st February 2023
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pingu393

7,797 posts

205 months

Wednesday 1st February 2023
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duckson said:
I think that if ALL the father's estate passed to the mother, the mother would have received everything free of IHT. When mother dies, her estate's IHT threshold is doubled to £650k. It's more complicated if father split his estate.

duckson

1,242 posts

182 months

Wednesday 1st February 2023
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pingu393 said:
duckson said:
I think that if ALL the father's estate passed to the mother, the mother would have received everything free of IHT. When mother dies, her estate's IHT threshold is doubled to £650k. It's more complicated if father split his estate.
Yep, OP says wife left everything.

5pen

1,891 posts

206 months

Thursday 2nd February 2023
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Thanks both. That link explains things better than the .gov site. To be completely accurate, my dad did leave a number of small amounts where my mother wasn’t the beneficiary - £2,250 in total.

alscar

4,125 posts

213 months

Thursday 2nd February 2023
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pingu393 said:
I think that if ALL the father's estate passed to the mother, the mother would have received everything free of IHT. When mother dies, her estate's IHT threshold is doubled to £650k. It's more complicated if father split his estate.
I hold LPA for an elderly relative and am also the Executor of her will.
When that sad day arrives begs the following question -her husband was killed in 1978 and left no will so the proceeds were shared between her and his parents - I believe she got 50% then 50% of the balance ie 75% in all.She never remarried so as part of any IHT planning will she leave 1x £325k plus then ?£ on the basis that off hand would have no clue as to what these numbers above translate to although I would guess less than £ 100k at the time ?

For my sins I am also the Executor of another relative who coincidentally is the twin of the relative above - her husband left her everything some 10 years ago and then she got remarried to someone else who also then subsequently died although she only got a tiny amount left to her.
As such when another sad day arises will she simply get 2x £325k ?

Not trying to tempt fate but would be good to know the answers -hopefully well in advance.

pingu393

7,797 posts

205 months

Thursday 2nd February 2023
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5pen said:
Thanks both. That link explains things better than the .gov site. To be completely accurate, my dad did leave a number of small amounts where my mother wasn’t the beneficiary - £2,250 in total.
There's an example of this on the .gov website. It looks like you want Example 1 as the guide.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/transferring-unused-ba...

alscar

4,125 posts

213 months

Tuesday 21st February 2023
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alscar said:
I hold LPA for an elderly relative and am also the Executor of her will.
When that sad day arrives begs the following question -her husband was killed in 1978 and left no will so the proceeds were shared between her and his parents - I believe she got 50% then 50% of the balance ie 75% in all.She never remarried so as part of any IHT planning will she leave 1x £325k plus then ?£ on the basis that off hand would have no clue as to what these numbers above translate to although I would guess less than £ 100k at the time ?

For my sins I am also the Executor of another relative who coincidentally is the twin of the relative above - her husband left her everything some 10 years ago and then she got remarried to someone else who also then subsequently died although she only got a tiny amount left to her.
As such when another sad day arises will she simply get 2x £325k ?

Not trying to tempt fate but would be good to know the answers -hopefully well in advance.
I’ve bumped my 2 questions just in case anyone is able to answer them.

PM3

706 posts

60 months

Saturday 4th March 2023
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Its probably been said before a number of times, but I'll ask ( out of paranoia )

Referring to IM funds in my instance ; I can sell one fund in my GIA and buy again ( same fund ) inside my ISA WITHIN 30 days and it does not fall foul of the 30 day rule for CGT purpose ??????? True or False