Tax and Wealth Planning

Wealth preservation is becoming more difficult and more demanding of action but the threats to private wealth encountered today have changed very little. What is new is the speed and intensity of those threats. There are variations of course – from one family, economic cycle or geopolitical area to another. One constant exists: the risks are real and nobody enjoys immunity.

Why Mishcon is different

We have shaped our service to suit this changing landscape. Our services focus on growing, preserving and transferring wealth between generations and include creating appropriate ownership and tax structures, establishing trusts, making wills and planning for succession.

This requires hard-headed legal help combined with practical and ‘real world’ advice. But it also takes an in depth understanding of what matters to our client and a delicate hand when dealing with sensitive situations.

Services

• Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax planning
• Post-death tax planning
• Tax-efficient asset structuring and investments
• Trust creation, administration and taxation (UK and offshore)
• Charitable trusts and philanthropy
• Foundations
• Succession planning
• Tax-efficient wills
• Estate administration, both domestic and international
• Post-death variations
• Powers of attorney
• Living wills
• Court of Protection applications

Our Experience

• Advising non-domiciled individuals on how to structure their UK property and business investments tax-efficiently.
• Creating a Family Investment Company (FIC) to enable a client to pass valuable assets to his children and grandchildren as part of a major inheritance tax planning exercise but without losing effective control. The FIC is one alternative to a trust but without the initial 20% tax charge.
• Restructuring the assets of a Russian oligarch following his move to the UK and the changes to the tax rules for non-doms in April 2008. Advising on how to protect his valuable UK home and exceptional art collection from UK tax while allowing him to enjoy them.
• Advising on whether the bankers’ bonus tax applies to hedge fund clients.
• Reorganising the family Trusts of a well known landed estate to save millions of pounds in inheritance tax on the death of the head of the family
• Estate planning and philanthropy advice for a hedge fund manager following the sale of his business, including setting up his charitable foundation.
• Advising on the creation of a Cayman Islands purpose trust and a Panama foundation for asset-protection and confidentiality reasons.
• A highly innovative court application to vary the terms of a valuable UK trust to ensure that some of the children were not inadvertently disinherited by their late grandfather
• Advising a well-known public figure on his objections to the registration of his enduring power of attorney on the grounds that he had lost mental capacity
• When one of our business clients died suddenly, we helped the family obtain an emergency Grant of Probate without having to pay the inheritance tax liability at that time. This exceptional concession allowed the client's business to continue largely unaffected by his death, thus preserving its value for the benefit of his family and employees.
• We acted for the Australian widow of a US citizen who died leaving no will covering his US assets. With the assistance of New York counsel, we advised how his valuable estate should be reorganised to make the most efficient use of both UK and US tax exemptions.