Readers’ forum: Is it viable to reduce the value of an estate?

If the value of an estate is say £1 3m (which is mainly the value of a house in the south of the country) is it viable to state in a will that everything over £1m (the inheritance tax limit) is given to a hospice charity thus reducing the estate to just £1m and leaving no IHT payable?

Or does reducing the IHT to 36% ‘nonsense’ come into play?

There will be many people across the south in very ordinary family homes with no excess income over expenditure etc and who cannot use any of the other so-called ‘exemptions’. I have checked and double checked this fact.

What do Taxation readers think?

Query 20 528 – Southerner.

Excess over £1m should be given to charity in a will.

Southerner asserts that the inheritance tax limit is £1m. In 2007 George Osborne said that the...