Recent years have seen the law surrounding Inheritance Tax (IHT) under almost constant flux. In 2018, an Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) report found two-in-five people who acted as an executor themselves spent at least 50 hours administering the deceased person’s estate. In an attempt to address this, and the multitude of far-reaching questions the report posed, an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) convened to discuss possible ways in which IHT could be reformed in order to make it more effective and fairer, and potentially to raise more revenue through it. In January 2020, the APPG published its final set of recommendations on how inheritance tax needs to be reformed. Much like the rest of the world, however, what effect the COVID-19 pandemic will have had on these proposed changes remains to be seen and is due for further discussion.
Whatever, comes of those discussions, members of the Devereux tax team have the benefit of years of practical experience and can advise tax payers, executors or support their advisors on the optimum strategy for securing Inheritance Tax reliefs and exemptions and maximise the inheritance passed on to the next generation.
Our experts have a successful track record at navigating the issues in high value estates with unusual features, trusts, agricultural property, business property and other reliefs. As such, IHT makes up an integral part of their tax planning expertise.
Our team are recognised experts in all aspects of inheritance tax, including:
- Inheritance tax planning and estate planning;
- Trusts;
- Non-domicile and international inheritance tax;
- Transferring allowances;
- Lifetime gifts and potentially exempt transfers (PETs);
- Reservations of benefit;
- Charitable and other donations;
- Business Relief;
- EBTs;
- Life Assurance;
- Appealing IHT decisions with HMRC or at Tax Tribunal.
Recent cases in the area include:
- Arron Banks v HMRC [2020] UKUT 0101 (TCC) (Banks's donation of a large sum of money to UKIP prior to the 2015 general election, and the fact that at the time UKIP did not qualify as a political party for the purposes of getting relief from inheritance tax on the donation).
- Routier and another v HMRC [2019] UKSC 43 (exemption from IHT for gifts to charities under s.23 IHTA 1984 did extend to transfer to Jersey trust).
- Alberto Nader and 7 others v HMRC [2018] UKFTT 294 (TC) (Death-bed IHT avoidance scheme-– whether value transferred; whether s.10 IHTA 1984 applied)
Devereux tax practitioners co-author the seminal practitioner text, McCutcheon on Inheritance Tax (Sweet & Maxwell) and the Offshore Trusts Chapter in Mellows: Taxation for Executors and Trustees (LexisNexis).
Members of the team are recommended by the major legal directories across the entire spectrum of tax work and our IHT experience is noted as a “particular strength.”
