To think it’s unfair that some people get inheritance while others start with nothing?

Most of the posters on this thread don’t want to fund their care costs. They want the taxpayer to pay them so their kids get a six figure windfall.

It’s not a windfall it’s money they put into property (as opposed spending on holidays etc)that belongs to people who have the right to choose where it goes. By your logic people should be putting any spare cash into future care.

It would certainly be sensible to put money away for future care. If someone inherits money it’s a windfall, they certainly haven’t earned it. Most people manage to buy a house and have holidays.

Whether they want to or not if the house in their name and they have sufficient equity it will be used to fund their care costs before it is eroded and the state has to step in. Which is why we all benefit if people are encouraged to make the long term decision to invest in property rather than spend their taxed income on rent, holidays, cars etc. Especially as in the short term renting is a lot cheaper than buying.

My father paid his care costs - £130k in last year of life in NE England and died as his life savings other than small equity in the house was exhausted and then we had to pay my mother's IHT too as she had died not too long before. So these issues are certainly live ones for me.

I agree with the poster to me saying I would not have IHT to pay as I will be dead. That is true but just as I wanted my children to have a good education and I paid for that and lots of nice stories at bed times and love etc like most parents I want them to inherit from me other than the £325k. i agree I could move to a £500k flat near here although 4 of us adults work here from my house - today it is 4 sometimes fewer so if I moved to a studio flat that would not work. I house 2 adult children too and I will work until I die as do not want to live on £12k state pension if I manage to live until age 67.

I accept these are all my choices but living in your house until you die it not particularly unusual. I was looking at the first records for this plot where I live from 1929 this weekend. A lady was the first person to own the house on this plot (as her husband had just died in 1927 - he, poor man had been widowed twice before marrying the lady). She moved here with one live in servant in about 1930. When she died her estate after applying inflation calculator was worth about £950,000.. It was interesting comparing then and now. I have not looked up death duties on estates in 1927 but they had become crippling to such an extent big estates with land but no money started pulling down country houses or giving them up.to the national trust which had been formed 1895.

In China on death in 2025 there is no IHT but you do have to pay 1- 5% of a property's value to take it over
https://www.chinajusticeobserver.com/a/does-china-have-inheritance-tax-2

China and Sweden with no IHT are better and the US with a US$13m tax free allowance for a single person as I am is better too.

Do you think you could possibly stop stating the bleedin’ obvious? We all know that. Apart from the part about rent being cheaper than paying a mortgage which simply isn’t true. Sky high rents are a major reason why people can’t afford to save a deposit.

Not correct, I said in the short term renting is cheaper which when you take into account stamp duty and all the other costs associated with buying is correct. And with interest rates as they are and stagnating/ falling house prices in many regions the length of time it takes to break even is lengthening.

But it’s not. Stamp duty is a tiny percentage of the price of a house and the associated costs, ie survey and solicitors’ fees are even tinier. On any metric renting costs far more than buying a comparable property. Frequently renters report being turned down for mortgages on affordability grounds when the repayments would be considerably less than their rent.

On a £1.2m house you’ll pay around £64,000 in stamp duty. With a mortgage rate at around 5.5% and stagnating (and in many cases falling) house prices chances are you’ll be underwater versus renting in the short term. And that’s before all the other costs of homeownership are included let alone if you’re on a variable rate mortgage.

Well, that might apply if you're buying a 1.2 million house, but I'm buying a 285,000 2 bed house at the moment. Which has been rented out and the tenants paid over 1,000 a month. If they could have got a mortgage, they'd have been paying about the same, and the house would have been theirs, and they wouldn't have been subject to rent rises.

@AzurePanda which is why I believe property values should be taken out the equation re care and we should all be paying in 2% ringfenced tax for care post 40 ( be it care homes or care at home) and that's everyone- workers, retired people, those on benefits.

This would benefit most people long term -and even those of modest means would often have a bit more to leave to family.

I think the deprivation of assets and dodgy schemes out there designed to avoid excessive care fees cause more issues than just everyone paying into a state owned insurance type system ringfenced for care needs

Totally agree @Crikeyalmighty. @1apenny2apenny that’s an amazing rental return - almost double what I get on the cottage I rent out.

@AzurePanda there are several reasons I feel this way - I don't like the idea that people by virtue of where they live or family wealth can often end up with shittier care in old age - and I also think it would free up councils to have money for drastically needed local services and improvements and keep council tax static or lower - many are spending up to 45% on purely paying for social care for those with little in the way of assets- or have worked through all their personal assets paying for care. At the moment the way I see it there is no incentive to actually have money in that middling level because it could easily be wiped out on care , which kind of goes against conservative principles and a real risk of second rate care or no care for those with few assets either - which goes against socialist principles- so it's the worst of all worlds!!

Me me me bagsy me. Lol

Sorry had to be done.

if you couldn’t leave money to your children why would anyone push yourself to earn more in the first place.

take Cuba all there education is free but when they go to work they are all paid about the same be it if your a doctor or a Waiter.

chances are the waiter is trained as a doctor but chosen to be a waiter as they earn more through tips.

if you couldn’t leave money to your children why would anyone push yourself to earn more in the first place.

To spend, enjoy life, spread it around while you’re alive and can see your kids enjoying it. It’s profoundly depressing how many people seem to work themselves into the ground and deprive themselves to leave their kids money when they’re dead. What a miserable way to live - or not live.

@blossomtoes I don’t see it like that at all, my family is everything to me and I find it hard to think of anything more worthwhile and satisfying than providing for them as best as I can.

We enjoy good food and good holidays but would never buy for example a brand new car, gamble, personally pay for business class flights, or even buy a takeaway. To me all of these things are a waste of money. We put money into stuff that will hopefully increase in value such as good art.

Each to their own of course but I struggle to understand why the estates of those who choose to invest in long term assets which rise in value should end up incurring a significantly larger tax liability than those who choose to spend it all along the way. You could argue that those who are spending are helping tax revenues via VAT which is why I think a 20% IHT rate isn’t unreasonable (although of course homeowners also provide a lot of employment via maintenance etc and account for a lot of home related purchases).

I would be interested to see if anyone has done an academic study on happiness levels for those who spend versus those who save.

@BIossomtoes I agree with you

Nice click bait post

Actually, dh and I earn enough to do both. It is not mutually exclusive.

Take away the incentive to do both, then we might decide to put in half the effort to just earn enough to spend before we die. The state is not getting the fruits of our labour over my dcs, whether in terms of income tax or IHT, which is earned through decades of toil, starting in school and working for excellent academics.

I would love to enjoy life as you say. Multiply that by all the high earners in the UK. I think Rachel has just created a monster of a problem, which is already showing in the stagnating economy.

I'm afraid there are an awful lot of Thatchers children on here 'there's no such thing as society , only the individual '

Those of you who will pay IHT or care fees or other such things over your dead body because you worked hard for it - who do you think should actually pay towards society ? is it just 'for others'

Ain’t that the truth? I guess it’s an inevitable result with a generation that grew up during the “loadsa money” 80s.

100% @blueshoes . I’m not British and despite having lived and paid taxes here for over 30 years we will be moving our assets back to my home country which has zero IHT for our retirement. The idea that we would give the British state 40% of what we have created over our own children is laughable given we have an alternative.

Newsflash: LIFE is unfair. And we generally only carp about it when we are the ones not benefitting from the unfairness 🤷🏻‍♀️

@AzurePanda I too am not born in the UK. I am a naturalised British citizen.

Me and friends who came to the UK from my country are already being advised to consider moving out of the UK and losing their UK tax residency to escape the punitive IHT. Yes, laughable that after all the additional rate tax I have been paying over the years, the government now wants to take 40% of assets which I have always planned to leave to dcs. I will also bring forward my retirement since there is no point contributing more into pension.

This money tree refuses to be shaken down any more.

@blueshoes yup, the whole experience with the Non Doms leaving the country in recent months has proven that. Snap on the bringing forward of retirement.