Welcome review of Inheritance Tax

Chancellor, Philip Hammond has called for a complete review into how inheritance tax applies in the United Kingdom.

The driving force for the review is twofold. One is that the government wants to tackle the concern of inter-generational unfairness as people are not going to inherit life changing sums until much later on in their lives and that generation are more and more reliant on the bank of mum and dad. The other reason for the review is to reduce the complexity of the current system in place.

This review is clearly long overdue, for example the gift rule of being able to give £3,000 a year without any inheritance tax liability has been in place for over 30 years and further the more recent changes have just made the inheritance tax system more complicated. For example the additional residence nil rate band causes a lot of confusion, which could have just been easily solved by raising the standard nil rate band.

We at GSC will look closely at how this develops.

For further information please contact James Cohen.