inheritance tax experts?

[krooton]

Yeah - I'm somewhere around here - not exactly there for obvious reasons. A decent three bed semi with garage would be more like £120k here.

1 bed flat, Zone 4 London, £150k 3 years ago, £190k now. Insanity!

 

[PhilGQ]

I suspect that IHT is done the way it is because its relatively easy to calculate and sort out at a time when the owner is departed.

I personally think it would be fairer if people were taxed a small % if there wealth above a threshold throughout their life. Rather than one easy to avoid lump at the end. It would however be a lot more difficult to calculate and collect (possibly unworkable).

 

[Freefaller]

That's why it's a good idea to either invest abroad and not tell anyone in the UK about it, or domicile yourself out of the UK, and gift your home(s) in the UK to family.

 

[Roady]

Part of the major flaw with IHT is that it was conceived when house prices were not astronomically high... (Read: not totally out of proportion to wage). Roll on a few decades and house prices are so high (with IHT being worked out as a % of such) that no inheritant can hope to pay IHT from liquid/cash assets, it will involve the selling of assets (and all the extra fee's involved) further punishing the inheritants.

Vanilla started to mention above about stately homes and I'm expecting that estates of that size are probably left as Trusts rather than directly inherited... Only going by what I know of Trusts from discussing it with my father regarding their future plans on how to reduce the impact of IHT (on 2 farms & 5 properties).

 

[Amp34]

The parents made a load of tax free money through no effort on their part due to the massive property spike since the 80s and the children object to paying a relatively small amount of tax?

IHT is there to increase social mobility by reducing the concentration of wealth. Do you want to live in a country that returns to the dark days of the late 19th century when a few hundred people controlling 90% of the land?

That's probably because the kids are hoping to use the money to finally buy somewhere to live near where they grew up!

I assume you also believe those in social housing should be moved out of central London and housed in cheaper areas? I hope you are because otherwise it's massively hipocritical, considering one of the main arguments for not doing that is to allow those in social housing to live near where they grew up and near friends/family.

Unfortunately those of us that actually go out and work are the ones penalised in the race to increase house prices and pretend the economy is expanding... Those that don't/can't work are given social housing in areas where re.t is in the thousands a month, areas those that aren't on £100k can't afford to rent/buy any more...