Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

With house prices as they are many now pay it anyway, but in principle I'd say any inheritance should really be taxed, ours was way less but due to it being a year between the death and the money being split we all paid cgt on it. At the time we grimaced but that's the law we paid up and it's not really had a dreadful effect on us.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

You couldn't be more wrong but as you are consistently wrong about most things that is only to be expected .
However i do have a tablet and a laptop and go on holiday at least once a year !
Meanwhile I do have a will I don't know anyone who doesn't. I would like to leave something for my children after all I earned it the government didn't .
However there remains the sticky problem of nursing home fees who is going to pay for them when I can no longer look after myself ?
My sons house will be full of grown up children who can't afford to buy their own places .

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

Hi

Now now Muddy, you are a very intelligent person.

You should have realised by now that any one who does not agree with UJ's view of life is a nasty party scumbag.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

There should be no inheritance tax on what has been left to the next generation. People work hard and long and already paid tax on what they earn
This is a means of taxing again on those earnings.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

No I can't agree with that, house prices have risen not because of hard work but because of shear luck.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

House prices have risen due to Government policy, particularly changes in the '80s. So people have worked hard to pay massive mortgages because property prices have inflated so much as a result of policy changes to free up the market.

Lots of children continue to live with parents because they will never be able to afford to buy. Either these houses will go on care fees or inheritance tax. So many adults will lose the only homes they have known. I have a friend like this. She lived all her life with her parents and brought up her daughters in their house. She has cared for them through alzheimers (both have it). Now she will be homeless once they die because the house is paying for her dad's care fees and her mum has it too. On top of this she is recovering from a very nasty cancer so cannot work. There will be next to nothing left for her and nothing for her kids.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

It's a mess isn't it, we inherited though from mil who bought her house for £2000 in the 50s it was worth £275,000 when she died that was not hard work. So paying tax on that amount would have been fair IMO

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

I'd go with that theory.
Most of us would probably agree their grandparents and their parents before them never even thought of owning their own home .. couldn't afford it, they all had to rent. They all had 6 to 10 kids, struggled, worked hard to clothe and feed them.
100 years on things have changed drastically.
There was the surge in residential house building in the 1930's after the old terraced slum clearance programs but the next major building bonanza was in the 60's, 70's and 80's .. large estates.
Cheaper, more affordable housing. My own parents were the first in their own families to have a mortgage. And that with 4 kids to bring up too. But they did it.

Then came the property boom .. and we all know what happened. Boom and bust.
Since then, young people have, in effect gone back to not ben able to afford to buy ... the same a 100 years ago though their lifestyle isn't comparable at all. They have everything .. cars, holidays, considerably enhanced spending power. .. and the bank of 'mum and dad'.
It'll be interesting to see how the generations after them fair after they've exhausted this financial buffer.
Presumably the cycle will begin again where parents have nothing to pass on to their kids.

Buying a house is an investment ... it makes profit and as a rule will amass more than other means of financial speculation.
Brick and mortar has certainly performed better than pension investments. . So as part of an inheritance it seems reasonable to expect to pay tax. Might not seem fair but it applies to all unearned income.

Re: Labour plans to cut inheritance tax threshold

A bit of a simplistic, naïve view and solution to the problem.
Estate agents might be greedy but it is really rather more the seller who dictates what they want for their house for various reasons. The main factor been that quite naturally they want to have made a profit and need a good profit to afford their next house. Bricks and mortar used to be seen as a cast iron, safe investment.
Suggesting houses go down to affordable rates? How many home owners would agree with that? Though in some areas there's been scant improvement in property value over the last 10 years. I don't think Estate Agents are to blame for that.
It's the high deposits that are needed now that are crippling ... in the 80's you'd be offered either 90% or 100% mortgages. Building societies were confidently riding on the crest of a gold plated wave until the repossessions started and the worrying term 'negative equity' was born.

Never could understand at the time though why they didn't restructure people's mortgages to something affordable to ride the economic downturn rather than evict and repossess and flood the market with cheap houses that undermined the recovery of prices.

Cheaper housing now would risk doing exactly the same and also cock up the nest eggs of any home owners whose only asset was their home.