“Calls for UK residence nil rate band removal despite IHT take dropping 12%”

May 28, 2019 | Tax

You may remember, in the days when election manifestos involved more than one issue, the Conservatives promised to increase the IHT limit to £1m. When it came to it, they only sort-of did, and not for everyone and everything, then it got lost in the Brexit mist (or fog or pea-souper). The ‘main residence nil-rate band’ makes our already horrendously-complicated tax system still more complex. Would it be asking too much, to both keep a promise and keep it simple? Probably.

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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.