“Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt accused of duping the public with ‘extraordinary’ tax-and-spending pledges”

Jul 5, 2019 | Tax

Both of our potential future Glorious Leaders have been promising the earth with, allegedly, little foundation. Should we believe them? Well if you remember, someone took Boris to court over his previous, fanciful, side-of-bus-£350m-a-week-for-the-NHS pledge. The court said that you can’t sue politicians because they always lie and if you don’t like it, vote them out. So that’s OK. Except, in this case, only 0.2% of the population have a vote.

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“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”

“HMRC scraps plans to tax pensions after death”

A couple of other Statement Highlights (in my world, anyway). A welcome ‘nothing happened’ on the treatment of pensions on death. They were never going to be liable to IHT (too complicated with trusts and trust law) but there was talk of making them income-taxable on the recipients at whatever age you die.

“Raising IHT threshold could cost government £6bn”

“Raising IHT threshold could cost government £6bn”

Well, the lesson of this week in politics must be to expect the unexpected. Or, alternative interpretation, to expect more of the same. The speculation on the future of Inheritance Tax has switched from abolition to a rise in the amount of wealth you can have before the 40% payment hits.