Inheritance

Albermarle

Sg28 said:

Albermarle said:

Sg28 said:

Im not sure why they would want to buy another property seems an expensive way to gift money imo.

Dont forget IHT is tapered.

3 to 4 years 32%

4 to 5 years 24%

5 to 6 years 16%

6 to 7 years 8%

7 or more 0%

Taper relief is widely misunderstood and only applies in a tiny % of cases. See this thread from the tax board.
Taper relief IHT — MoneySavingExpert Forum

Its easy to jump to conclusions of 1m+ when you personally live in an expensive part of the south east and read 3 properties owned. 

There will be many estates worth over One Million, but for significant taper relief to apply to gifts they would normally have to be well  in excess of £325K. Not many people could afford to do that.

Beanzmeansheinz

Thanks for your advice. 

Their house is worth about £750,000, rentals total £400,000 and their whole estate around 2 million.

Thanks 

Bostonerimus1

In this case it's worth paying a solicitor who specializes in estate and tax matters to get everything in order according to your parents' wishes. They should value the estate and look at any IHT exposure and make sure the pensions have designated beneficiaries. If they can afford to make regular gifts then a plan can be made for that too. They might also think about giving some money to charity. I was in a similar situation to your parents a couple of years ago and was tying myself in knots with the perceived tax and inheritance issues, but a visit to an estate lawyer put things into perspective as they had many clients with similar circumstances to me and there were simple, almost boilerplate, solutions. The most annoying part of it all was making sure my heirs will know where all my funds are kept as it's increasingly all online and I have an alphabet soup of passwords.