Find out what your family would actually owe.
We work out the likely bill on what you hold now and show you the options while there is still time to use them. We work alongside your solicitor.
Book a first meetingHow it works, plainly
Capital Acquisitions Tax is paid by whoever receives an inheritance or gift. Each person has a tax-free threshold based on their relationship to you, and anything above it is taxed at 33%. Thresholds are lifetime totals, and transfers between spouses and civil partners are exempt entirely.
Why the family home is the problem
A house can push a child well past their threshold on its own. The tax is then payable in cash, generally within months. Your family inherits a property and owes a sum of money they do not have.
Families sell homes they wanted to keep purely to pay the bill. It is one of the more avoidable sadnesses in Irish financial life.
A Section 72 policy
A life assurance policy taken out specifically to pay an inheritance tax bill. Provided the proceeds are used to pay the tax, they are exempt from CAT themselves.
In effect you pay a modest premium during your life so that your family can keep the house and settle the Revenue with the policy instead of the property. It must be set up correctly and in advance, but it solves the problem cleanly.
Ask us about Section 72 ↓€3,000 a year, every year
There is a small gift exemption of €3,000 per person per year, and it does not touch the threshold at all. A couple can each give €3,000 to each child every year. Over fifteen or twenty years, across several children, that moves a substantial sum out of the estate without any tax and without using any allowance. It only works if you actually do it, and it cannot be backdated.
What to watch out for
Every relief above has conditions that must be satisfied over years. This is why inheritance planning is done in your fifties and sixties, not by your executors.
Pick a date and time that suits you.
No sales pitch, just a conversation about what you already have, what it is heading for and whether we can improve it. You will get a written summary either way.
