'Dripfeeding' income into trusts could limit IHT

Earlier this year, HM Revenue & Customs published a research report outlining the motivating factors behind the use of trusts, which revealed very few people used trusts solely as tax-avoidance tools. Julie Hutchison, estate planning specialist at Standard Life, says there are many reasons why people don’t want to gift assets directly to other family members, which makes a trust appropriate. However, she argues a trust can be an ideal vehicle for estate planning for all sorts of reasons, as highlighted by HMRC, but she says until now people have been focusing on areas such as Discounted...