Financial planning for the end of the tax year

This article gives some suggestions on financial planning steps to take before the end of the tax year, so that you can make the most of your tax allowances and organise your affairs as tax efficiently as possible. However, the first point to make is a practical one.

Easter is early this year, with Good Friday on March 29th and Easter Monday on April 1st. With holidays bound to impact on administration at some financial institutions, our first suggestion is that if you’re going to act before the end of the financial year, don’t leave it until the last minute. If you want to make sure your transactions are processed in time, look on the week commencing March 25th as the last practical week.

Individual Savings Accounts

The overall personal limit for an Individual Savings Account (ISA) for the current tax year is £11,280 and this will increase to £11,520 for the new tax year commencing on April 6th. It’s important to note that if you are only contributing to a cash ISA then the maximum is exactly half the overall allowance – so £5,640 and £5,760 respectively. The other key point is that if you don’t use your ISA allowances for this tax year then they are lost – they can’t be ‘carried forward’ to the next tax year.

We’d always recommend making use of your ISA allowances if you can – you pay no tax on capital gains which you make within an ISA or income you take from it. For long term investment there is a huge range of funds available within an ISA ‘wrapper’ from the very cautious to the very adventurous: as always, we’d be happy to discuss all the options with you if you’d like some advice.

Capital Gains Tax

Accountants will tell you that CGT is the ‘forgotten’ tax relief – people who religiously use their full ISA allowance completely fail to utilise their CGT allowance. For the current tax year everyone has a CGT allowance of £10,600 – meaning that capital gains made on investments such as shares are free of tax if they are within this limit. Husbands and wives can gift assets to each other without incurring a CGT charge, effectively giving a married couple a limit of £21,200. Like the ISA allowance though, the CGT allowance is an annual one, and cannot be carried forward to a subsequent tax year.

Inheritance Tax

The current individual limit for Inheritance Tax is £325,000 and this will remain the same for the tax year 2013/2014. Remember though, that you can make gifts during a tax year and these will be exempt from IHT if they fall within the Revenue limits: the limit is £3,000 per person, so £6,000 for a married couple. Although these amounts are small they can still help to reduce the value of an estate.

There are, of course, far more complex and sophisticated Inheritance Tax planning measures such as the use of trusts; if you feel that you would like specialist advice in this area then we will be happy to help.