Tax talk: why wealth transfer is a growing tactic

At the Tory party conference in October 2007, shadow chancellor George Osborne told the assembled faithful that a future Tory government would raise the inheritance tax (IHT) threshold that then stood at £300,000 by more than threefold to £1m. Cue much rejoicing. The following week at the Labour Party conference, then chancellor Alistair Darling announced his transferable nil rate band proposal that effectively doubled the IHT threshold for any surviving spouse or civil partner whose former spouse/civil partner had not made use of their nil rate band on death. This reduced the potenti...