What will you really be leaving to your loved ones ?
After a lifetime of hard work and sensible money management you might be planning to pass on your wealth to close family and firends. But unless you have planned for it, Inheritance Tax (IHT) may take a large bite of what you leave them.
What are considered assets in your estate ?
You may think that IHT won't effect you. However, if you add up the current value of all of your assets, you might be surprised to find the total does in fact exceed the nil rate band.
Examples of assets that would form part of your estate are:
- your home
- it's contents
- your car
- your bank and building society accounts
- any stocks and shares
- your jewellery
- any antiques you have collected
- any other investments you have accumulated over your lifetime, including any jointly owned asset.
An ever increasing number of people now have assets valued in excess of the nil rate band. many are unaware of this fact, as they have always believed that IHT is a rich mans tax and would not affect them.
So What Choice Will You Make ?
The last thing that most of us want to do is saddle our family with a large tax bill when we die. We want to do the right thing by them - to arrange our affairs so that we pass on as much of our wealth as possible. But IHT planning sounds complicated and, although we want to do the best by our family, we don't want to leave ourselves short - to give away so many of our assets now that we don't have enough left to fund a comfortable retirement.
Will you choose to do nothing ?
The main problem is we don't know whats around the corner. After all, none of us know how long we are going to live. We don't know we'll enjoy either - how long we'll be able to stay in our own home or whether we'll need nursing care. So most of us end up doing nothing about IHT. We know it's not ideal, we'd really like to be making a more responsible choice but we just don't know what to do.
At Clayden Associates we are able to provide advice with relation all areas of Inheritance tax planing including protection, trust and investment soultions.
What about Long Term Care?
If your making plans on how to make sure that you can to pass as much of your wealth on to the who you want - without a sizeable chunk being taken ... have you considered the potential implications of Long Term Care costs?
If you haven't then maybe you should talk to us at Clayden Associates.
For independent estate planning advice click here. Alternatively call us now on 01364 643003 or email us at info@claydenassociates.co.uk
Speak to Clayden Associates ... For the good of your wealth.
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