On a mute point, if you are in a company scheme, it is the trustees of that fund who legally decide your beneficiary, but they obviously comply in almost all cases with your wishes, a judge would not have primacy over the trustees, I have no idea about Personal pension plans rules

There are many existing "swerves" to avoid paying inheritance tax. This is the Government, perhaps admitting it is getting too tricky to catch people out, and perchance accountants are wising-up about how to lessen people's tax obligations.
And besides, with recent record numbers of home repossessions, and people having to sell their property to afford late-life care, then that particular income stream for the Government is not in the best of health.
If you think you're going to be liable for paying inheritance tax, you need to see a (better) accountant.

Edited by Forest Hillbilly (17 Jul 2023 8.51am)

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

The thing is though if you could gift any amount to your family or friends then the housing issue would get better. The environment would benefit as there would be money swishing around for cars and greener house upgrades. Spending would go up in the shops and tax take on it would probably garner at least 50% back. So it would probably only be a negative 3 billion or so. Going forwards it would likely get positive over time as not many would send a gift overseas in reality and even in a bank account hmg makes money. Give me the keys to 11 as I’ve sorted it

I don't know whether I understand this fully.

Looking at the 2 first paragraphs of the above edited version of cryrst's post, are "gifts" and "exemptions" two different things. Could someone, for example, make "gifts" of £250 a year to 10 people and still have his £3000 "exemption" available to give away as he saw fit?

Then it seems that someone can in addition to the above make "regular payments" to another person. Does that mean only one person or any number? And is £720 a year a limit or just an example?

No wonder Tolly's, the accountant's bible, runs to over 1000 pages. I think one of the Treasury's main aims must be to make tax law incomprehensible. Why not get rid of these footling allowances and the conditions and exclusions that surround them and just have one simple allowance? Or, preferably, get rid of the whole thing!

I suspect house price inflation has far exceeded the costs of mortgages even allowing for the interest payments.

I am sure someone can do the calculations.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

Please read it as literally as it’s written. Any amount to anyone. If you have offshore banking you probably don’t need gifts anyway. Give it to anyone 90% would spend it. That is taxed so hmg gets part of it back. Then more is gifted, more is spent and more is taxed. In the bigger picture of GDP of 2 trillion it’s a snip tbh.