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New Inheritance Tax Rules planned.


With the conservatives now in office it will not be long until the reforms they promised in their manifest become Law, one of the major headline grabbing promises was to review Inheritance Tax.

Inheritance tax is the tax liability payable to the government when a person dies leaving an estate in excess of £325,000 or when a couple or civil partnership it could be as much as £650,000, any amount in excess of this figure could be liable to 40% tax.

With property prices rising more and more, many estates have become liable to tax, but the logic behind this tax seems unfair, at best; why should people pay tax on savings, assets and investments that have already been liable to tax during the deceased's lifetime?

That being said I don't think the tax will be abolished any time soon, the tax free threshold of £325,000 was introduced six years ago, and is one of the most burdensome of any country, for example the exemption level in America stands at $5,500,000, the reason this is so high is that the tax is very costly to collect, so many countries just focus on the largest of estates.

The change, expected to be made by the new Government, is the introduction of an additional allowance of £175,000 for property per person (£350,000 joint relief); this will take the tax-free threshold to £1,000,000 per couple with property.

A word of caution however - the conservatives did mention five years ago that they would increase the threshold to a million, but they didn't.

If you are concerned about your Will I would recommend regular reviews to keep pace with changes to the law and your own circumstance.

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