Savings & Investments

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Inheritance Tax Planning

 560 315 Jess Easby
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Careful Planning Can Reduce Or Even Eliminate The Inheritance Tax Payable

Intergenerational planning helps you put financial measures in place to benefit your children later in life, and possibly even your future grandchildren, so it’s important to start planning early.

You may want to keep an element of control when passing on your assets. You may want your money to be used for a particular reason, such as paying for school or university fees or for a first property deposit. Or you may just want to make sure your money stays within the family.

Without appropriate provision, Inheritance Tax (IHT) could become payable on your taxable estate that you leave behind when you pass away. Your taxable estate is made up of all the assets that you owned, the share of any assets that are jointly owned, and the share of any assets that pass automatically by survivorship. Careful planning can reduce or even eliminate the IHT payable.

IHT is not payable on the first part of the value of your estate – the ‘nil-rate band’. The nil-rate band is currently £325,000. If the total value of your estate does not exceed the nil-rate band, no IHT is payable. Outstanding debts and funeral expenses can be deducted from the value of your estate.

 

baby hand holding a man's handLeave Your Interest In The Family Home

Commencing 6 April 2017, an additional ‘residence nil-rate band’ (RNRB) allowance was introduced if you leave your interest in the family home to direct descendants (such as children, step-children and/or grandchildren). This only applies to your main home but can be available even if that home had been sold after July 2016.

The RNRB is being phased in gradually. For the 2018/19 tax year, the maximum additional allowance is £125,000, increasing your total IHT allowance to £450,000 (£900,000 for a married couple). The maximum allowance will rise by £25,000 each tax year until it reaches £175,000 in 2020. This will give you a potential total IHT allowance of £500,000 or £1 million for a married couple. For estates worth more than £2 million, the tax relief is tapered away.

There are legitimate ways to plan to reduce the amount of IHT you may have to pay. We can advise you on the ways that you may mitigate any exposure, including these:

Make A Will

Dying intestate, or dying without a Will, means that you may not be making the most of the IHT exemption that exists if you wish your estate to pass to your spouse or registered civil partner. For example, if you don’t make a Will, then relatives other than your spouse or registered civil partner may be entitled to a share of your estate, and this might trigger an IHT liability.

Make Lifetime Gifts

Gifts made more than seven years before the donor dies, to an individual or to a bare trust, are free of IHT. So, it might be appropriate to pass on some of your wealth while you are still alive. This will reduce the value of your estate when it is assessed for IHT purposes, and there is no limit on the sums you can pass on.

You can gift as much as you wish, and this is known as a ‘Potentially Exempt Transfer’ (PET). If you live for seven years after making such a gift, then it will be exempt from IHT, but should you be unfortunate enough to die within seven years, then it will still be counted as part of your estate if it is above the annual gift allowance. However, the longer you survive after making the gift (subject to surviving at least three years), the lower the IHT charge.

You need to be careful if you are giving away your home to your children with conditions attached to it, or if you give it away but continue to benefit from it. This is known as a ‘Gift with Reservation of Benefit’.

Leave A Proportion To Charity

Being generous to your favourite charity can reduce your tax bill. If you leave at least 10% of your estate to a charity or number of charities, then your IHT liability on the taxable portion of the estate is reduced to 36% rather than 40%.

Set Up A Trust

As part of your Inheritance Tax planning, you may want to consider putting assets in trust – either during your lifetime or under the terms of your Will. Putting assets in trust – rather than making a direct gift to a beneficiary – can be a more flexible way of achieving your objectives.

Family trusts can be useful as a way of reducing IHT, making provision for your children and spouse, and potentially protecting family businesses. Trusts enable the donor to control who benefits (the beneficiaries) and under what circumstances, sometimes long after the donor’s death.

Compare this with making a direct gift (for example, to a child), which offers no control to the donor once given. When you set up a trust, it is a legal arrangement, and you will need to appoint ‘trustees’ who are responsible for holding and managing the assets. Trustees have a responsibility to manage the trust on behalf of and in the best interest of the beneficiaries, in accordance with the trust terms. The terms will be set out in a legal document called ‘the trust deed’.

Passing On Our Assets To Our Loved Ones

Being wealthy can have its benefits, and its challenges too. When we die, we like to imagine that we can pass on our assets to our loved ones so that they can benefit from them. In order for them to benefit fully from our assets, it is important to consider the impact of Inheritance Tax. If you would like further guidance on Inheritance Tax Planning then please contact us.

Information Is Based On Our Current Understanding Of Taxation Legislation And Regulations. Any Levels And Bases Of, And Reliefs From, Taxation Are Subject To Change.

Tax Relief and Pensions

 560 315 Jess Easby
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Annual and lifetime limits

When it comes to managing money, one of the things some people find most difficult to understand is the tax relief they receive on payments into their pension. Tax relief means some of your money that would have gone to the Government as tax goes into your pension instead. You can put as much as you want into your pension, but there are annual and lifetime limits on how much tax relief you get on your pension contributions.

Tax relief on your annual pension contributions

If you’re a UK taxpayer, in the tax year 2018/19 the standard rule is that you’ll receive tax relief on pension contributions of up to 100% of your earnings or a £40,000 annual allowance, whichever is lower. Any contributions you make over this limit will be subject to Income Tax at the highest rate you pay. However, you can carry forward unused allowances from the previous three years, as long as you were a member of a pension scheme during those years.

But, there is an exception to this standard rule. If you have a defined contribution pension and you start to draw money from it, the annual allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 income where adjusted income exceeds £150,000.

The Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA)

In the tax year 2018/19, if you start to take money from your defined contribution pension, this can trigger a lower annual allowance of £4,000. This is known as the ‘Money Purchase Annual Allowance’ (MPAA).

That means you’ll only receive tax relief on pension contributions of up to 100% of your earnings or £4,000, whichever is the lower.

Whether the lower £4,000 annual allowance applies depends on how you access your pension pot, and there are some complicated rules around this.

The main situations when you’ll trigger the MPAA are:

  • If you start to take ad-hoc lump sums from your pension pot
  • If you put your pension pot money into an income drawdown fund and start to take income

The MPAA will not be triggered if you take:

  • A tax-free cash lump sum and buy an annuity (an insurance product that gives you a guaranteed income for life)
  • A tax-free cash lump sum and put your pension pot into an income drawdown product but don’t take any income from it

You can’t carry over any unused MPAA to another tax year. The lower annual allowance of £4,000 only applies to contributions to defined contribution pensions and not defined benefit pension schemes.

Tax relief if you’re a non-taxpayer

If you’re not earning enough to pay Income Tax, you’ll still qualify to have tax relief added to your contributions up to a certain amount.

The maximum you can pay is £2,880 a year or 100% of your earnings – subject to your annual allowance.

Tax relief is added to your contribution, so if you pay £2,880, a total of £3,600 a year will be paid into your pension scheme, even if you earn less than this.

How much can you build up in your pension?

A pension lifetime allowance puts a top limit on the value of pension benefits that you can receive without having to pay a tax charge.

The pension lifetime allowance is £1,030,000 for the tax year 2018/19. Any amount above this is subject to a tax charge of 25% if paid as pension, or 55% if paid as a lump sum.

Workplace pensions, automatic enrolment and tax relief

Since October 2012, a system has been gradually phased in requiring employers to automatically enrol all eligible workers into a workplace pension.

It requires a minimum total contribution, made up of the employer’s contribution, the worker’s contribution and the tax relief.

For more information please visit our pension page  or book a chat with our expert team now.