As long as leaving a lifetime interest to the property to my wife (no thresholds between spouses) causes the assessed value of my son's inheritance to fall ....
It doesn't. It locks your son into receiving an inheritance taxed at full value, with a valuation date thrust upon him the day your spouse dies and with the tax rules that are in place then. It's a bad idea
It doesn't. It locks your son into receiving an inheritance taxed at full value, with a valuation date thrust upon him the day your spouse dies and with the tax rules that are in place then. It's a bad idea
Ah that's a shame. I will likely sell up my rentals in Ireland and buy German property so. I can definitely do it in Germany. It's a common tax avoidance measure here to grant a life interest to yourself or your spouse and then gift the property to your child to reduce the value of real estate for gift/inheritance tax purposes. Having said that, the whole thing is more generous here: 400k limit per parent every 10 years, so gifts up to 800k are tax free every decade to a single child from both parents combined. And there's a family home exemption as mentioned above. Irish inheritance taxes are truly punitive at 35% or whatever it is now. Here it starts at 7% if you go over the far more generous thresholds.