Limiting IHT: Don't let the tax tail wag the investment dog

Successive governments of whatever hue, quite rightly and enthusiastically, have supported small and early stage businesses with various tax breaks. These include inheritance tax (IHT) relief on business property relief (BPR) and AIM stocks and both IHT and income tax benefits on enterprise investment schemes (EIS) and seed enterprise investment schemes (SEIS). There are very good reasons for these concessions. They are related to the extra incentives required to persuade private investors to support small, up-and-coming businesses (one could say the UK's commercial future) which are,...