Archers demise prompts tax planning

TS IS, OF COURSE, in mourning.

We’re still coming to terms with the loss of Nigel Pargetter, in the Archers, who tragically lost his life falling off a roof. Appalling.

The loss, the grief, the empty space left by the man in all our lives. What can you do? Well, you can discuss how to deal with his estate.

That’s exactly what Radio 4’s Money Box did inviting on the profession’s everyman tax adviser Mike Warburton to mull the question of whether the estate could avoid tax.

Warburton, ever the professional, has somehow discovered Pargetter had placed the estate in an immediate post death interest trust which impressed TS because BBC script writers must have been doing their homework. That nicely avoids tax but what happens when his wife wants to pass on the estate to their children?

Warburton was ready: Pargetter had written a letter of wishes allowing trustees to pass on the assets in the trust to the kids when the time was right. So, nicely avoiding inheritance tax. Blimey.

TS is an avid Archers fan but even we must have missed the episode in which Pargetter sat down with his accountant and sorted all that out.

Must have been a thriller.