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Inheritance Tax, should it be scrapped or kept?

Catriona Torrance, Solicitor in our Private Client team has provided her opinion on whether inheritance tax should be abolished or kept within the Scottish Legal System.
Her opinion was published in Lawyer Monthly, alongside various opinions from other lawyers and financial advisors. 
She comments: – 
“Dealing with the practicalities of inheritance tax when winding up estates, we see the impact this tax has at ground level. People worry about IHT but have little understanding of it, which leads to misconceptions. On one hand, there’s a widely-held perception that the government will swoop in, take your hard-earned assets and leave precious little for your family; on the other hand, there’s an assumption you’re not ‘rich’ enough to pay it but that the truly ‘rich’ should be heavily taxed before their families benefit from inherited wealth. Where to draw the line causes consternation”. 
“In the current economic and political climate, I don’t believe there is an appetite in the UK to scrap IHT, with pressure to set higher rates of tax on the wealthiest using various tax measures. The least well-off are already, for IHT purposes, exempt – if the value of the estate is less than the nil rate band, or everything is going to a spouse”. 
To read the full article please click here.

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