Worldwide Financial Planning

Avoiding a Le Penn victory avoids a referendum on leaving the EU in France and of course the potential for a collapse in both the Euro and EU, given France’s colossal part in the alliance. This could have created a massive stock market alarm and inevitable crash. And so the potential contagion for a knock on domino effect has backfired with both France and the Netherlands remaining upright.

This week the UK general election picked up steam, with leaked manifesto's, a hit and run, and a detailed discussion of who puts the bins out being obvious highlights.

Currently you are allowed to pass a nil rate band of £325,000 free of IHT to beneficiaries, with the rest being taxed at 40%. If you leave 10% of your estate to charity, this tax is reduced to 36%.

A new additional rate band on top of this was introduced in April called the residence nil rate band (RNRB). In 2017 to 2018 this nil rate band is £100,000 per person, which rises by £25,000 for each year up to a maximum of £175,000 for deaths in 2020/21. After that, it will increase with the consumer price index.

So with the slashing of the tax free allowance from £5,000 to £2,000 due to be put in place from April 2018, the government would have been clobbering those with portfolios in dividend-paying shares and investment funds held outside of ISAs and pensions. They estimated they would hit 2.27 million people grabbing £2.6bn from the taxpayer.

Despite production cuts agreed by OPEC, US Shale production has steadily increased, overwhelming any action to prop up the oil price.

This has great relevance to investors, as the near doubling in oil prices since the low point of around $28 at the start of last year is the primary driver of the inflation we've seen creeping up across the globe.

What we got was a single page of tax wishes, which as far as we could tell consisted of a lot less tax, coincidentally (we're sure) for Donald Trump, but also individuals and corporations.