Q: What is estate planning?
Estate planning is all about taking action to ensure that your assets are inherited by the people of your choosing, at the time of your choosing, with a careful eye on tax.
An IFA’s role is sometimes described as creating and conserving wealth for clients.
But the greater the success the greater will be the HMRC demands on the client for a proportion of that success.
Mark Green, head of tax and estate planning at Legal & General Savings, said: “Estate planning is about ensuring inheritance tax liabilities are kept to the minimum using established and non-abusive strategies to enable capital to be conserved for future generations.”
According to HM Revenue & Customs, the number of families caught by inheritance tax has more than doubled over the last 10 years.
Irvine Baxter, UK sales director at Friends Provident International, said this represents an opportunity for advisers as there are a number of methods that people can be use to mitigate IHT.