Next week sees the end of the 2016-17 tax year. On the 6 April 2017, any action you take to minimise your tax liabilities for 2016-17 will be largely ineffective. So what, if anything, can you still action this week?<\/p>\n
Capital gains tax (CGT)<\/strong><\/p>\n The amount of tax free gains you can make during 2016-17 is £11,100. This exempt allowance is available to all UK resident tax payers, accordingly, married couples and civil partners both qualify.<\/p>\n If you have no gains chargeable to CGT thus far during 2016-17, there is still an opportunity to crystallise gains during this coming week, up to the annual exemption limit, and no tax will be payable. For example, if you have a shareholding that you have been considering for disposal, and you could sell a sufficient quantity of shares before 6 April 2017, the disposal would utilise your allowance without creating a tax liability.<\/p>\n The important matter to note is that this annual exemption is lost if you don’t use it; it cannot be carried forward and used in later years.<\/p>\n Inheritance tax (IHT)<\/strong><\/p>\n There are a number of annual reliefs that you can use without creating a chargeable event for IHT purposes. For example, the exempted annual gifts you can make are:<\/p>\n You can give away £3,000 worth of gifts each tax year (6 April to 5 April) without them being added to the value of your estate. This is known as your ‘annual exemption’.<\/p>\n You can carry any unused annual exemption forward to the next year – but only for one year.<\/p>\n Each tax year, you can also give away:<\/p>\n You can use more than one of these exemptions on the same person – for example, you could give your grandchild gifts for her birthday and wedding in the same tax year.<\/p>\n You can give as many gifts of up to £250 per person as you want during the tax year as long as you haven’t used another exemption on the same person.<\/p>\n Company car users<\/strong><\/p>\n If your employer pays for your private fuel this will create a fairly significant income tax charge for 2016-17. You may save money if you calculate the cost of the fuel provided and reimburse your employer. For 2016-17, you need to do this before 6 April 2017. (For 2017-18, the rules are being relaxed slightly and you will have until 6 July 2018 to make an equivalent reimbursement for 2017-18).<\/p>\n\n
Small gifts up to £250<\/h3>\n