New queries, issue 4489

Property plan

Will passing shares through a discretionary trust avoid a capital gains tax charge?

A client and his wife own shares in a property investment company and would like to start gifting shares to their adult children as the first stage in their inheritance tax mitigation strategy.

The difficulty is that the value of the properties has risen significantly since they were originally acquired by the company so a considerable capital gain would trigger were they to simply gift the shares.

We...