How to reduce your clients' IHT liability

IHT

Neil MacGillivray, head of technical support at James Hay, says cake-and-eat-it schemes still work.

The amount of inheritance tax (IHT) collected by HMRC has reduced from £3.8bn in 2007/08 to £2.4bn in 2009/10, a whopping 37% reduction in two years. This has arisen in the main due to the introduction of transferable nil rate bands (NRB) between spouses and civil partners as well as generous increases in previous years of the NRB limit. However, with the NRB limit now frozen until 2015, the tax take is showing signs of rising again with the monthly amount from IHT this July at its highest since July 2008. It is therefore always important not to overlook your client’s potential liabil...