The benefits of flexibility

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What differentiates an IFA from the crowd, what allows him/her to demonstrate TCF, what proves to the Revenue that a trust is genuine and not merely an artifice which requires no trustee input?

One answer to all these questions can easily be that the IFA recommends a flexible trust solution for IHT mitigation purposes rather than the simple but completely inflexible expedient of a discounted gift trust. By recommending a discounted gift trust an IFA is very likely helping the client to avoid either a little (if they live less than 7 years) or a lot (if they survive 7 years) of Inheritance Tax. This is terrific so long as the client does not have too much reliance on the funds within the trust, especially if his or her circumstances were to change. Unfortunately, however, to...

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