Fingers crossed, Darling

The two announcements in Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report that got the most headlines were the two that actually represented the least amount of change.

The two announcements in the Pre-Budget Report that got the most headlines were the two that actually represented the least amount of change. Take the business of making non-doms pay a £30,000 annual levy to maintain their status after seven years. No one has any idea how many people will end up paying this, but I can't think it will be very many. Most non-doms only stay a few years, so there is no reason for them to be too bothered at all by anything that happens after seven years.

Then there is the raising of the inheritance threshold for couples to £600,000. Given that each part of a couple had their own £300,000 allowance anyway, this is really neither here nor there. It's nice that it cuts the administration burden for those who like to minimise their tax bills no more nil-band trusts and no more deeds of variation for those with assets under £600,000 but it absolutely does not represent (as so many newspaper headline writers seem to think) a doubling of the inheritance tax threshold.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.