www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45732851
It's not something I'd ever thought about. Aren't there wills and other such existing mechanisms to do such things?
I'm not sure i quite get the straight civil partnership thing, but if people want to do it, it's not something that particular bothers me. Reading the article got me thinking, I wonder what relationship will be campaigned on next to be formalised?
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I think it's more unintended consequences of the silly inheritance and tax laws of this country.
If sister A could give sister B her assets, pension rights etc. without penalty then I suspect there would be no need for the partnership.
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If sister A could give sister B her assets, pension rights etc. without penalty then
>> I suspect there would be no need for the partnership.
I'm not sure about all the inheritance rules, is there no mechanism to give them say your share of the house that you both live in?
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No, it would most probably be caught by the Gift with Reservation ruling, which basically states you can't gift away an asset and still derive a benefit from it. Unless the sister paid the other sister a market rent.
Last edited by: The Melting Snowman on Wed 3 Oct 18 at 19:28
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I'm in favour of civil partnership if it becomes a sort of 'marriage lite' where essentially you simply register the relationship by way of some sort of sworn statement showing it to be long term and enduring. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of Parliamentary Draughtsmen to define an appropriate set of conditions.
The ladies in that report are, I think, a pretty exceptional case. If siblings could meet the conditions above, and perhaps some additional hurdles as well so as to preclude obvious abuses, then why not? It seems very hard that the survivor might need to sell home to cover IHT.
Alternatively the IHT rules could make some exceptional provision for those circumstances.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 3 Oct 18 at 21:24
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Too much more of this and nobody would ever pay inheritance tax. Instead of a couple marrying each other, they should marry their in-laws. Then transfers would be tax free.
And then parents could marry their children.
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I don't know about unintended, but clearly the intention of the whole marriage/partnership thing, from a legal point of view, is to join two people's finances together in a way that either confers tax advantages, or confirms a mutual financial obligation for some purpose, such as raising children.
It is curiously at odds with the relatively recent corresponding de-coupling of a couple's income tax position, via independent taxation.
Which itself contradicts their joint assessment for social security benefits.
So the whole thing is a fundamentally confused mixture of different principles anyway, with this latest proposal simply additing to the anomalies.
Perhaps we need to go back to first principles:
Do we want to give financial benefits to people merely because they choose to live together?
If we do, is that because they live together for some quasi-religious purpose, such as marriage or its secular equivalent?
Does the state have a right or duty to outlaw incest?
Can incest exist if the two people are biologically incapable of producing children?
What is incest in an age when any two people (or perhaps three?) can in principle produce children by biological or other means?
Or should we simply say, people are always individuals for tax purposes, and any relationships they care to form are nothing to do with the state and deserve no special tax concessions?
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unintended consequences? - zippy
