Inheritance Tax & Estate Planning

IHT is the most avoidable tax in the UK system and the least planned-for. Frozen nil-rate bands pull ordinary families into scope through house prices alone; pension changes are bringing retirement funds into estates; and the reliefs that protect business and agricultural assets are conditional, capped and easy to lose through innocent restructuring. Most people discover their exposure posthumously — which is to say, their families do.

Acumon's approach is unglamorous and effective: quantify the exposure today, protect the reliefs you already qualify for, use the exemptions the legislation hands out annually, and structure larger gifts and assets so time — the seven-year clock — does the heavy lifting. Then keep the plan current as law and life change.

Start With the Number

Planning without quantification is guesswork, so we begin with a full estate review: assets and how they are owned, both spouses' nil-rate bands and the residence nil-rate band — including the taper that removes it from larger estates and the ways it is accidentally forfeited — reliefs available on business and agricultural property, and pensions under the incoming rules. Families are regularly surprised in both directions, and the surprises change what is worth doing.

Lifetime Giving, Structured

The core machinery of IHT planning is giving assets away and surviving seven years — but the machinery has gears worth using properly: annual and small-gift exemptions that compound quietly over decades, the normal-expenditure-out-of-income exemption that removes regular gifts from the estate immediately and is chronically underused, and the sequencing of larger gifts against the seven-year clock. We structure the programme, document what exemptions require, and keep the records your executors will one day be grateful for.

Business Owners and the Reliefs

Business and agricultural property reliefs can remove qualifying assets from IHT — subject to the caps and conditions now attached to them — and they are lost more often than they fail: excess cash on the balance sheet, investment activities diluting trading status, the wrong assets held personally, buy-sell agreements drafted in ways that forfeit relief at the worst moment. We audit relief status while it can still be fixed, and plan succession of the business alongside succession of everything else, with our valuations and succession specialists in the same building.

Trusts, Wills and the Whole Estate

Some situations need structure rather than outright gifts — young or vulnerable beneficiaries, second marriages, assets that should be controlled as well as given — and trusts still earn their place there, administered by our trust tax practice with the charges calculated honestly into the decision. Wills are where the plan either executes or unravels: we review them against the tax plan, and our ICAEW-accredited probate team sees estates through administration, so the planning and its eventual execution live in one firm.

What You Get With Acumon

• Full estate and IHT exposure review, quantified rather than estimated
• Residence nil-rate band protected against taper and accidental loss
• Gift programmes using every annual exemption and the income exemption
• Seven-year clock sequencing and record-keeping for larger gifts
• Business and agricultural relief audits before restructuring destroys them
• Trust structures where control matters, costed honestly
• Wills reviewed against the tax plan they are supposed to execute
• ICAEW-accredited probate practice to administer what was planned

Why Acumon for Inheritance Tax & Estate Planning?

• Many of the firm's qualified tax advisors previously worked for HMRC
• In-house Chartered Tax Advisor (CTA), qualified by the Chartered Institute of Taxation
• All 90 of the firm's professionals are based in the UK
• ICAEW Chartered Accountants, accredited by ICAEW to administer probate
• Trust tax, valuations and succession planning specialists in the same firm

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.