How to approach changes in tax law with clients By Holly Maxwell-Gumbleton, Solicitor, Mayo Wynne Baxter. Did you listen to
Legal
Rachel Reeves’
speech at the Labour Party Conference? The semantics
were interesting. She mentioned the
word ‘tax’ countless times, as would be expected from the Chancellor of the exchequer - tax avoidance, tax
evasion, tax loopholes and more tax compliance officers. The language
that Reeves adopted was hoping to
foster agreement with Labour’s very
16 www.sussexbusinessgroup.co.uk
reasonable argument: if we sniff-out the tax dodgers and scrap the non-
doms tax status we may just generate enough funds to mend the ‘broken
NHS’, not to mention the rest of the UK’s ailing infrastructure.
Interestingly, Reeves did not make
any direct references to inheritance tax which she is, of course, saving
up for the actual budget at the end of this month. At the time of writing, we are now expecting a watered-down
version of the non-dom tax status,
but also reforms to the current IHT
regime with special focus on pension pots being brought into the orbit of
IHT. It will be particularly galling for
those who have carefully planned their retirement based on the current set
of tax rules; they will need to urgently review their investments and dig out their carefully written wills.
Although I write this from the
perspective of a private client lawyer,