The present IHT threshold is a mere £300,000 after which 40 per cent is taken, plus solicitors fees, estate agents commissions, VAT, and perhaps still the possibility of that HIP, you can just about kiss goodbye to half of the property’s value.
Find the latest industry jobs
That is not just the home, but all assets and savings added together.
Why spend most of your hard working life to provide any assets, only for them to be taken on your death in tax?
This government has encouraged inflationary house pricing so that more and more properties will be subject to IHT.
The only real tax source it has is based around housing, hence all the over-development. Then all those insurances policies, mortgages, Stamp Duty, HIPs – fee collecting quangos.
Find out more about this weeks industry news
It is totally unfair that someone is a live-in carer, unable to go out and earn a living is not allowed to be rewarded by a sick or elderly relative without being clobbered by IHT. That carer could in fact become homeless and forced to then live off benefits.
How can that make any sense?
I appreciate this is a mortgage publication, but brokers are all subject to taxation and burdens of being in business. So come on, jump up and down and complain. Don’t let certain politicians and their inner circle dictate to us while they make their, not millions, but billions at our expense.
get the daily news delivered to your inbox
It is a case of who you know, not what you know, and that should not be allowed.
Corruption, lies, cover ups – we see it almost daily on the television and in the newspapers.
But who usually gets the blame for just about everything? The middle men and women such as intermediaries, estate agents and some times even solicitors.
There are so many rules, regulations and laws that life is just too difficult and bodies overseeing other bodies who keep an eye on others who are keeping watch on you and me.
Who would have thought George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother would ever happen. But it has.
Richard F Grant
