Finally… Some Peace & Quiet!

Posted on February 12, 2026 by - Uncategorised

Ok, I know I have made this point before and I promise this will be the last time, however I do feel that we have a real opportunity ahead of us over these next 6 months or so.

If you cast your mind back to the October and November of last year, the personal finance world was in somewhat of a mess. The rumour mill was in overdrive ahead of the budget and said rumour mill then spawns advice and guidance from all corners on how to manage or mitigate rumoured tax changes that may never actually materialise (and most of which didn’t!).

Doing any planning in that environment is difficult, let alone thinking about our estate planning, something that, by definition, is very long-term. As a result – people often take one of two approaches:

On the one hand, some will rush to beat the changes and get new planning put in place ahead of any big announcements.

On the other, some people will instead freeze – confused into paralysis by all of the noise and contradicting advice.

Fast forward to the present day though and things are somewhat different.

It is February 2026. The November 2025 budget is behind us, along with all of the rumour, noise and speculation. Even better, most of the feared changes did not come to pass.

As such, we now have some time. Time to think. Time to plan properly, in an environment that is stable (for now at least). What better time to think about your Estate Planning?

However, and this is a big one. I think we probably only have 6 months or so of this relative calm before the noise starts again. If the Budget returns to its more traditional October date, then the rumour mill will probably fire back up again in July or August – just a few short months away!

So, as always, the message is clear – the time is now! 

Why not get your planning in place before the financial world goes mad again?

Phew!

Posted on November 27, 2025 by - Uncategorised

Phew!

Those were the words that left my lips as the Chancellor sat down yesterday. Or, I should say, half an hour before she even stood up – following the unprecedented leaking of the whole OBR document before the Budget statement had even begun!

It was quite amusing watching the BBC team react in real time to the scale of this leak and then the joyful look on their faces when they realised that, yes, we really do have pretty much the whole contents of the Budget before it has even been announced!

That aside, the actual announcements were, for the most part, already known or expected. Yes – there were a few bits of detail coloured in, but on the whole we knew about pretty much all of the major items (whether this was intentional or not remains to be seen).

On a serious note though, from an Estate Planning perspective, we did have what seemed to be a very light (read: nothing changed) budget. This was despite the various rumours and speculation that gifting allowances might be imposed or the long standing 7 year rule could turn into 10, or even 14 years.

It’s Oh, So Quiet…

Posted on November 20, 2025 by - Uncategorised

As the famous song goes, “It’s oh, so quiet, it’s oh, so still”.

That’s how it feels anyway when it comes to the Budget.

Usually by this time (6 days out and counting), we would have the press reporting on all manner of leaks and ‘off the record’ comments from those within Government. These leaks often tend to be fairly accurate and detailed and so, for Budgets gone by, we have gone into the big day with at least a pretty good idea of what to expect.

This time around, we have very little to go on. This would suggest one of two things. Either:

A – the Government has been very good at keeping leaks under control this year.

or

B – the Government themselves still have not figured out what’s going to be in the Budget.

I fear it may be more the latter than the former!

Don’t get me wrong, we have a pretty good idea of what they are not going to do. We had Rachael Reeves’ oh-so-bizarre Downing Street speech to lay the ground for them to break the manifesto promise and increase income tax, only for them to seemingly U-turn on this measure a few days later.

We know there were discussions around changes to tax free cash on pensions which again would seem to have been abandoned.

But the details of what to expect on Wednesday lunchtime next week are very sparse indeed.

It seems like we will be seeing some kind of tax proposed on electric vehicles to make up for dwindling fuel duty receipts and perhaps an increase to the higher bands of council tax in London and the South-East. Beyond that, we are shooting in the dark.

A few months back, there was all of the usual rumour, speculation and opinion on what they might do or should do, however none of that counts for anything now.

What we do know is that they will be looking to raise more money and there are unlikely to be any substantive tax giveaways.

Whatever happens, we at least don’t have long to wait to be put out of our misery (or into it as the case may be). Rest assured the Buckingham Gate team and I will be following the budget statement closely, followed by a deep dive into the Budget document itself as well as the countless technical documents and consultations that come alongside it.

We have our post-budget Webinar scheduled for 2nd December at 2pm where we will unpack the full Budget statement (including the devil in the detail) and look at planning solutions to work with whatever new announcements are made. You can sign up on the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aR6ge3YXQEmWF1id7ddJsA?mc_cid=c9c89c68db&mc_eid=ec91e5a07d#/registration

Surely They Wouldn’t…. Surely?

Posted on November 7, 2025 by - Uncategorised

This week saw Chancellor Racehel Reeves take to the podium in Downing Street for what was a most bizarre press conference. It was bizarre for a number of reasons.

First off, it is almost unprecedented for a Chancellor to give a major statement to the media in such close proximity to the Budget itself. Second, having made this most unusual move, the actual speech itself contained… pretty much no information at all.

The BBC summed it up perfectly (and I am paraphrasing slightly here) when they said that the speech this week was to make sure that the first 5 pages of the Budget document (usually dedicated to the economic backdrop – read: excuses – which has led them to their chosen budget measures – read: tax rises). Usually this part of the Budget speech and the document itself are immediately forgotten and overshadowed by the actual announcements in the budget – as such, the Government’s thinking seems to be to get the excuses out in a separate speech and as a result people might pay a modicum of attention.

While this press release did not actually tell us anything, in reality, it told us a huge amount. It would seem that the foundations have been laid for the big manifesto promise to be broken. Just this morning the papers are reporting that a 2p increase to income tax has been presented to the OBR as a potential Budget measure.

Please don’t get me wrong, I always thought it incredibly foolish for Labour to have made the big tax promise in the manifesto in the first place. The issue with these kinds of promises is that they sound great at the time, but things can (and do) change.

To have ruled out changes to the 3 main taxes, collectively responsible for circa 75% of tax revenue, has painted this Government into a corner so tight it is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Clearly the public finances are in a dire state and action is going to be required, so that brings us to the present day where it does seem that Labour are setting us up to break the most prominent promise of all from a manifesto barely 18 months old.

In my humble opinion, that would surely be political suicide. For a Government seemingly the least popular in many generations to give the media (and the opposition) such huge ammunition to attack them surely would spell their downfall.

Despite all of this… it does seem like a very real possibility that this is what we will see on 26th November. I have a feeling that the next 3 weeks could be very interesting indeed from both a political and economic point of view!

If Not Now….

Posted on September 15, 2025 by - Uncategorised

I think we are approaching a real inflection point in the IHT and Estate Planning world. And by ‘approaching’ I mean, in the next 2/3 weeks – the end of September let’s say. The reason I say this is because the rumour mill is once again in full force ahead of the Budget.

The date has been set for the 26th of November. This feels like the Government are kicking the can down the road as far as they can get away with in some vein hope that the assorted scandals will have blown over by then and economic data might have improved – I suspect they could be disappointed on both counts.

The delay has even caused frustration among the Scottish Government as it seems that Scotland will not be unable to pass its Budget ahead of the Christmas break.

Just When You Thought…

Posted on August 26, 2025 by - Uncategorised

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does.

Hot on the heels of the Government’s response to the ‘IHT on Pensions’ consultation (which is still being debated and digested by the profession) we have media reports this week that Labour are actively considering yet more changes to the IHT regime!

The suggestion this time is that they could introduce a lifetime cap on gifting.

The former Labour Chancellor Roy Jenkins famously described Inheritance Tax as a “voluntary levy paid by those who distrust their heirs more than they dislike the Inland Revenue”.

Up until now that statement has been, for the most part, 100% true.

No Mans Land

Posted on June 9, 2025 by - Uncategorised

It occurs to me that we are in somewhat of a No Mans Land at the moment.

The autumn budget bombshell is fading into the rear-view mirror although the impact of many of the measures is still not totally clear.

The changes to pensions death benefits are arguably the largest issue impacting on our Estate Planning and this is the area where there is perhaps still the greatest uncertainty.

The Budget announced the changes at a high level and then put the detail out to consultation. That consultation ended in January and the usual 3-month period for the Government to respond has already come and gone without so much as a mention.

Momentum

Posted on May 6, 2025 by - Uncategorised

It occurs to me as we approach the Summer that we are in a period of high risk. No, I’m not talking about the stock markets or the economy. I am talking about the risk of losing momentum in the Estate Planning world.

We had the budget in the Autumn which was arguably the most impactful on our Estate Planning in a generation. Major measures were introduced that are pulling more and more people into the IHT space, while making existing IHT liabilities much worse in many cases.

Following announcements of this magnitude, it is natural to see a spike in activity and also a spike in impetus – people are more motivated to get things done to try and improve their position.

The Eye of The Storm

Posted on March 31, 2025 by - Uncategorised

Well, the Spring Statement this week was uneventful (from an Estate Planning perspective at least) and that is a good thing!

For one, it means that the Labour Government, in this tiny respect at least, do seem to have kept a promise – when they were elected they committed to holding just one major fiscal event a year and they have held true to their word… for now.

The Spring Statement really ran as it was intended – we got an economic update, some revised forecasts and the usual ‘book cooking’ to make the country’s finances meet the Government’s own self-imposed rules ‘by the end of the parliament’.

If You Don’t Fly First Class

Posted on March 3, 2025 by - Uncategorised

One of my favourite adverts of all time was an airline billboard from several decades ago that read along the lines of

“If you don’t fly first class, your children will”

While of course it is very much in the airlines interest to sell first class tickets and they would very much like to see wealthy people spending their money doing so, there is a much deeper underlying message here.

It is no secret that the attitudes to spending and saving have changed as generations have passed, however I think there is much more to it than that.