A woman from Sussex has been jailed for avoiding IHT.
Inheritance Tax is at present a tax which is relatively easy to avoid, legally, provided you contact 
our IHT Planning team in good time. Â A very low cost initial review can pave the way for massive savings to the benefit of future generations of your family. Â But in this case, it was clearly left too late….Or should we say, trying to avoid Inheritance Tax. Â The Telegraph reports:
“A 56-year-old woman has been sentenced today to two years in jail having lied to HMRC about the value of assets she inherited after the death of her aunt. She claimed to have inherited £285,000 when the sum was in fact £1.5m.
She also lied about financial gifts made to her by her aunt before her death, the taxman said.HMRC has issued details of the case and conviction to deter others from understating inheritances in order to avoid death duties.Currently estates below £325,000 are not subject to the tax. Assets above that threshold are taxed at 40pc.Married couples or civil partners can add their two “nil rate bands” together, giving a joint allowance of £650,000.
HMRC said that Ms Bunn, from Hassocks, Sussex, confessed, following an investigation, that in addition to understating the value of her inheritance she also “failed to declare substantial cash gifts from her aunt while she was alive”.
Only gifts within certain strict limits are exempt from inheritance tax, unless the person who makes the gifts lives on afterwards for at least seven years.”Main Inheritance Tax page,More on the story.