Inheritance tax can take 40% of everything above your available threshold. Most of it is avoidable with planning done early enough. We look at your whole estate and arrange a plan that reduces what's owed, not just a list of theoretical reliefs.
We work through what you own, what it's likely to be worth, and which reliefs apply to your situation, then arrange a plan while you still have time to act on it.
Book a free consultation →If a client's estate is heading toward a tax bill nobody's planned for, that's usually when we hear from you. We work through the numbers directly with you and report back in language your client will follow.
Discuss a referral →Every estate has a nil-rate band of £325,000 before any tax is due, and everything above it is taxed at 40%. If you leave your home to children or grandchildren, an additional residence nil-rate band of £175,000 usually applies, taking your personal threshold to £500,000. Both thresholds are frozen for the next few years, which means more estates are drawn into inheritance tax each year as property values rise around a fixed line.
Married couples and civil partners can pass any unused threshold to each other, so a surviving spouse can potentially have up to £1 million before inheritance tax applies. That transfer isn't automatic on paper: it has to be claimed correctly when the second estate is administered.
Gifting. You can give away £3,000 a year with no inheritance tax implications at all, and larger gifts made more than seven years before death fall outside your estate entirely. Gifts within seven years can still be taxed on a sliding scale, so timing and record-keeping both matter.
Charitable giving. Leave 10% or more of your net estate to charity, and the rate on the rest drops from 40% to 36%.
Trusts and life insurance. Certain trust structures can remove assets from your estate for tax purposes, and a life insurance policy written in trust pays out to your family directly rather than through your estate, so it isn't taxed alongside everything else. From April 2027, most unused pension funds and death benefits will also count as part of your estate for inheritance tax, a change that catches a lot of people out because pensions have historically sat outside it.
"Mr and Mrs D inherited a house from Mrs D's mother and were planning to sell it. Nobody had told them the estate would face a large, unplanned tax bill on the sale. We restructured the estate before the sale went through, using reliefs they were entitled to but hadn't claimed, and brought the liability down substantially. The sale went ahead as planned, just with a much smaller bill at the end of it."
No. Inheritance tax is a UK-wide tax, set by Westminster, and it applies the same way whether you live in Glasgow or Guildford. What does differ in Scotland is succession law itself: who is entitled to inherit, and how an estate is distributed if there is no will. We coordinate both together.
Property values have pushed more ordinary estates over the threshold than most people realise, especially once a family home is included. It is worth checking even if you don't think of yourself as wealthy.
It can be, but only if you understand the seven-year rule and structure it properly. Gifts made within seven years of death can still be counted as part of your estate, and giving away money you might later need for care costs can leave you short. We plan gifting alongside the rest of your estate, not in isolation.