How to minimise inheritance tax

Rising inheritance tax has caused a stir among home-owners. Merryn Somerset Webb explains what you can do to cut down the bill.

There are so many ridiculous things about our attitude to house prices in Britain that it is hard to know where to start. But I was reminded this week about one of the more irritating. When prices go up, people are thrilled. They are richer through no effort of their own. But no sooner have these unearned and unmonetised riches appeared in their imagination, than an article in the Sunday papers starts freaking them out about the inheritance tax (IHT) that will have to be paid on their estate on their death. And so it was this week.

The IHT take is rising fast it was up 7% in the year to April 2013 and is around 30% higher now than it was in 2010. But while The Daily Telegraph runs with the idea that there is a "death duty threat as housing booms", the rise isn't really about house prices. Instead it's about fiscal drag.

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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.