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      • Taxation & duties law

        Inheritance Tax Made Simple

        The Essential Guide to Understanding Inheritance Tax

        by Andrew Komarnyckyj

        'Inheritance Tax Made Simple' offers practical measures that you can take to reduce the burden of inheritance tax (IHT). This applies whether you are concerned about the impact on your own money and assets, or you are receiving an inheritance which may be subject to IHT or cause you to be subject to IHT.The book is divided into four parts:Part 1: An overview of inheritance tax.Part 2: Planning to reduce any IHT burden during your lifetime.Part 3: Taking measures to reduce the burden of IHT on death.Part 4: Dealing with IHT issues if you are administering an estate.Inheritance tax touches some of the most sensitive areas of any legal subject, and dealing with it can often be unduly stressful, or come at a difficult time in your life or the lives of loved ones. It is the aim of this book to be helpfully straightforward and a thorough guide to this complex area of law, and to lessen such stresses as far as is possible.---Erratum to first edition:Point (4) on page 14 should read: "In some cases there will be a nil-rate band to transfer where the death of the first spouse occurred before 21 March 1972. Prior to 21 March 1972, if a husband or wife left assets to his or her spouse (or anyone else) those assets were taxable. If the assets exceeded the nil- rate band in force at the time, there will be no nil-rate band available to transfer. If they were less than the nil- rate band at the time, there could be a partial or entire nil-rate band to transfer."

      • Economic theory & philosophy

        Public Revenue Without Taxation

        by Ronald Burgess

        Gordon Brown was a past-master at sneaking in new taxes by stealth, but his efforts as Chancellor and then Prime Minister were merely the latest in a long line of party leaders desperate to extract more money from reluctant taxpayers. This book challenges the need for government to resort to such underhand practices which undermine the economy, killing the goose which lays the golden eggs, and the integrity of the political process.The author argues that not only does taxation flout the principle of private property, but it ‘is a primal cause of both inflation and unemployment. Regardless of this, the freely elected governments of contemporary trading economies – with the acquiescence of their electorates – persist in raising the major part, if not all, of their revenues by means of taxation. The immediate cause of such action by governments... is ignorance of any acceptable alternative method of raising sufficient public revenue.’Burgess shows how the development of Keynes’ general theory of employment ‘leads to the conclusion that an open trading economy is likely to be most competitive, and therefore most prosperous, only when taxation is abolished’ – but government must be funded. How can this be done without taxation?To provide an answer he refines Alfred Marshall’s distinction between the public and private value of property to reveal an alternative, peculiarly public source of revenue. Unlike a tax, defined by a former Labour Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, as ‘a compulsory contribution imposed by a public authority, irrespective of the exact amount of service rendered to the taxpayer in return’, the ‘public value’ identified by Marshall would deliver an exact equivalence between the benefits enjoyed and the amount paid. On the basis of this widely accepted definition, therefore, it is not a tax but the price for services rendered like any other transaction - the price fixed by the market.The author shows how reform may be introduced with a minimum of disruption, so that politicians with an eye to re-election can achieve measurable results during the lifetime of a parliament.

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