Ed Janes - Quilter Financial Advisers

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Ed Janes - Quilter Financial Advisers

I am a Financial Planner at Quilter Financial Advisers providing services in Pensions, Inheritance Tax and retirement planning, Investments, and Protection.

Do you know what your number is that will enable you to retire? To be at the point that everyone wants to be. To have enough money to live the life you want for the rest of your life, without the fear of running out of money. Well…. I can tell you. You can refer to me as a “lifestyle” financial planner. I help you achieve your long-term financial goals by taking the time to understand how things are for you now and listen to what you would like life to be like for you and your family in the future. I use cutting-edge software to create a well-balanced financial plan as well as advise you how to invest wisely, effectively and as tax-efficiently as possible. I also help people with intergenerational wealth, so your hard work can help the people you want, for generations. I often think about the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know” as it prompts the question; Can you be certain that you’re making informed decisions about you and your family’s future if you’re not taking advice? Approver Quilter Financial Services Limited & Quilter Mortgage Planning Limited. 29/10/2024

09/10/2026

Two years to rewrite his mother's will

When Mark's mother died, she left him £200,000. He didn't need it, and keeping it would have cost his own children £80,000.

Mark is 58, mortgage free, with a good pension and an estate already well above the inheritance tax threshold. Every pound of his mother's gift would simply sit on top of his own estate, waiting to be taxed at 40 per cent when he dies. On £200,000, that's £80,000.

He wanted the money to go to his two children, now in their twenties and trying to buy their first homes. The obvious move was to give it to them himself. But that's a gift from Mark, so it only leaves his estate if he lives another seven years.

There's a better route, and it has a deadline. Within two years of a death, beneficiaries can sign a deed of variation, which rewrites how the will distributes the estate. For inheritance tax, the money is treated as though his mother had left it to her grandchildren herself.

So it never becomes Mark's. It isn't a gift from him, there's no seven-year clock, and it doesn't touch his estate at all. His mother's estate is taxed exactly as it would have been anyway.

The deed has to be done properly, with the right statements included and everyone affected agreeing to it. Done well, it's one of the simplest pieces of planning available, and one of the least known.

Once two years have passed, the inheritance is simply Mark's, with all the tax that comes with it.

A will can be rewritten after death. Just not forever.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

07/10/2026

Given away twelve years ago, still in her estate.

Inheritance tax has a rule for exactly this. If you give something away but keep enjoying it, the gift is ignored and the asset is treated as still yours. Pauline gave away the paperwork. She kept the house. So the full value, now £600,000, sat in her estate as if the transfer had never happened.

Then came the second problem. Normally, when someone dies, the gain on their assets is wiped clean for capital gains tax, and whoever inherits starts afresh at today's value. That didn't happen here, because legally the house had been her son's for twelve years. His starting point is its value on the day she gave it to him, around £350,000. When he sells, he'll pay capital gains tax on £250,000 of growth.

Inheritance tax as if she'd kept it. Capital gains tax because she didn't. The worst of both.

There are legitimate ways to pass on a home, including some that work while you still live in it, such as paying a full market rent. They have to be set up and evidenced properly, which is the part the internet version leaves out.

Giving it away only works if you actually let it go.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

05/10/2026

He left it to his wife. His children got nothing.

Graham left everything to his wife, on the understanding it would go to his children after her. It never reached them.

Graham married Sue after his first wife died. He had two children, she had a son. They lived in the house Graham had owned for thirty years. His will was simple: everything to Sue. They'd talked it through. When she was gone, the house would go to his children. She agreed, and she meant it.

Graham died at 71. The house became Sue's outright.

Four years later Sue remarried. In England and Wales, marriage automatically cancels an existing will, and she never made a new one. When she died, the intestacy rules divided her estate between her new husband and her own son. Graham's children, as stepchildren, had no claim under those rules at all.

Nobody behaved badly. Sue didn't betray anyone. The problem is that once assets pass outright, they belong to the new owner, to leave however they choose, or however the law decides if they don't. A promise, however sincere, isn't a legal instruction.

This is where a trust in the will earns its place. Graham could have left the house so that Sue had the right to live there for the rest of her life, fully secure, with the house passing to his children after her. Her home protected, his wishes protected, and on the first death the inheritance tax position is typically no different from leaving it to her outright.

It matters most in second marriages and blended families, but it applies wherever a plan depends on someone doing the right thing later.

Trusting someone is not the same as a trust.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

02/10/2026

£1m in the company bank, £400,000 of tax risk.

David's company had £1 million sitting in the bank, built up over twenty careful years. For inheritance tax, that caution could cost his family £400,000.

David is 62 and owns an engineering business worth around £3 million. About £2 million is the trading business itself. The other £1 million is cash, retained profit he's never needed, kept as a safety net.

He assumed the whole company would pass to his children with Business Relief, the inheritance tax relief on trading businesses. Most of it would. The cash is the problem.

Business Relief is designed for business property. Money the company holds but doesn't need for its trade can be treated as an excepted asset, and excepted assets get no relief at all. If HMRC decides that £1 million isn't required by the business, it's taxed as if David held it personally. At 40 per cent, £400,000.

A large enough pile of cash or investments can raise a bigger question: whether the company is still mainly trading at all. If that tips the wrong way, relief on the whole company is at risk, not just the cash.

None of this means reserves are wrong. A business genuinely needs working capital, and cash set aside for a specific, evidenced future purpose can still qualify. The issue is money that has quietly accumulated with no job to do.

With full relief now capped at £2.5 million since April 2026, the shape of the company matters more than ever. Surplus cash can be extracted, put to work, or planned for deliberately. It just shouldn't be left to chance.

A healthy balance sheet isn't always a well-planned one.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

01/10/2026

A £20,000 kitchen, a limit for life

Karen took £20,000 from her pension for a new kitchen. It turned out to be the most expensive kitchen she'll ever buy, and the builder had nothing to do with it.

She's 56, still working, and her pension had grown nicely. Taking a lump out seemed harmless. It was her money, she was old enough, and she paid the income tax on it.

What she didn't know is that taking taxable money out flexibly triggers a much lower limit on future saving. Before the withdrawal, she could pay up to £60,000 a year into her pensions with tax relief. After it, £10,000. Permanently.

A year later she joined a new employer with a generous scheme. Between her and the company, £20,000 a year goes in. That's £10,000 over her new limit, and the excess is taxed at her marginal rate. At 40 per cent, a £4,000 charge, every year she stays. The usual escape route, using unused allowance from earlier years, isn't available against this limit.

The part that stings is how avoidable it was. Had she taken only her tax-free cash, the quarter of a pension that can come out without income tax, the lower limit would never have been triggered. Same kitchen, paid from a different part of the same pension, and her allowance stays untouched.

This catches people in their fifties more than anyone: still working, still saving, and dipping into a pension for the first time simply because they can.

The withdrawal was small. The limit is permanent.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

29/09/2026

Four years and eleven months.

Frank gave his daughter £250,000 towards a house. He died four years and eleven months later, believing most of the gift had already left his estate. None of it had.

He knew about the seven-year rule, and he'd heard about taper relief, the idea that after three years the tax on a gift starts to fall. By year five he assumed he was most of the way there.

His remaining estate was £600,000, mostly the house, left to his daughter. His allowances were £325,000, plus £175,000 because the home went to his child. £500,000 in total.

Had the gift fallen away, tax would have been 40 per cent of £100,000. £40,000.

But because he died within seven years, the gift came back into the calculation first, and it used up £250,000 of his £325,000 threshold. The rest of the estate was left with far less allowance to go round. The tax rose to £140,000.

Taper relief did nothing. It only reduces the tax charged on the gift itself, and a gift sitting inside the tax-free threshold has no tax to reduce. For most families, that is exactly where their gifts sit.

The gift wasn't a mistake. Helping a child onto the ladder while you're alive to see it is one of the better things money can do. What was missing was a plan for the seven years. A simple life policy for that period, written in trust, can cover the potential bill for a modest premium.

The clock runs for seven years, not three.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

25/09/2026

She gave away a flat. HMRC still sent a bill.

Janet gave her son a flat. She didn't receive a penny for it. HMRC still wanted £47,280.

Janet is 66. She bought the flat for £100,000 twenty years ago and has let it out ever since. It is now worth £300,000. Her son is getting married and rent was swallowing his salary, so giving him the flat felt like the obvious way to help, and a sensible move for inheritance tax too.

What nobody mentioned is that for capital gains tax, a gift is treated as a sale. HMRC looks at what the flat was worth on the day it changed hands, not what she was paid for it. So Janet made a £200,000 gain on a transaction that brought her nothing.

After her £3,000 allowance, £197,000 is taxed at 24 per cent. £47,280.

It is also due quickly. A gain on UK residential property has to be reported and paid within 60 days. There were no sale proceeds to pay it from, so it came out of her savings.

And the flat isn't clear of inheritance tax yet either. A gift only drops out of the estate once she survives seven years.

Had she kept the flat until death, the gain would have been wiped out, because assets pass on death free of capital gains tax. Inheritance tax would apply instead. Neither route is automatically right. They cost differently, at different times, and there are ways to structure a gift like this that can defer the gain. That choice is worth making before the deeds are signed, not after.

A gift can be generous and still be a sale.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change, as is tax legislation.

01/09/2026

Peter took £60,000 from his pension. The tax deducted was £25,379. The right amount was £11,432. Nobody made a mistake.

He retired in the spring at 62, and this was his first taxable withdrawal: £60,000 to clear the mortgage and sort out the kitchen, with no other taxable income this year.

On those facts the full-year tax comes to £11,432.

What actually left the payment was £25,379.

That's not an error, and it isn't the provider being difficult. A first withdrawal usually arrives before the provider holds a proper tax code, so it's taxed on what's called an emergency basis. In plain terms, the system assumes the £60,000 is the first of twelve identical monthly payments, and gives Peter one month's worth of allowances instead of a year's worth.

One twelfth of his tax-free allowance. One twelfth of the 20% band. One twelfth of the 40% band. The rest of the payment, over £48,000 of it, taxed at 45%.

So Peter is £13,947 short at exactly the moment he'd planned to spend the money.

He does get it back.

There's a claim that takes a few weeks, or HMRC settles up automatically after the tax year ends. Between April and June this year HMRC repaid £50.35 million of exactly this tax, across more than 12,600 claim forms. That's an average of about £3,993 a time, sitting with HMRC instead of with the people who'd earmarked it.

Here's the part almost nobody is told. A lot of that queue was avoidable. A small first withdrawal, taken early and well ahead of the main one, gets a live tax code onto the provider's records.

The main payment is then taxed with a proper share of the year's allowances behind it rather than one month's worth. The later in the tax year it lands, the closer it comes to the right figure, and a March payment can come out right to the pound.

Same pension, same money, same tax year. In one order it's £13,947 light on the day it matters. In the other, the gap shrinks, and with the timing right it disappears.

The withdrawal is rarely the mistake. The sequence is.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please note that individual circumstances vary and are subject to change.

28/08/2026

Michael earned a £10,000 pay rise and kept about £4,000 of it. He assumed payroll had made a mistake. It hadn't.

He's 46, does well, and had just crossed into six figures for the first time. He expected to lose 40% of the rise, like the rest of his higher earnings. Instead he lost closer to 60%. On that slice of income, he keeps just 40p in every pound.

There's no 60% rate in the rulebook. This one is hidden. Once your income passes £100,000, your tax-free personal allowance starts to disappear, £1 of it for every £2 you earn above the line, until by around £125,000 it's gone entirely. So Michael is taxed on the rise itself, and taxed again on the allowance he's quietly losing. Two bites, one pay rise.

It's one of the strangest features of the system: a stretch of income, roughly £100,000 to £125,000, taxed more harshly than the money sitting above it. Nobody designed it as a 60% band. It's a side effect, and most people walk straight into it without being told it's there.

Here's the part that turns it from a grievance into a plan. The same mechanism runs in reverse. Put that slice of income into a pension, and you don't just get the usual relief, you also win back the personal allowance you were losing. In that band, a pension contribution is effectively worth 60p in every pound. There's no other allowance in the system that gives back at that rate, and it exists only here, only while you're standing in it.

This isn't about hiding income or clever schemes. It's about where the money lands. Left as salary, most of that slice goes in tax. Directed into a pension, most of it stays Michael's, just later, with a quarter of it available tax-free when he draws it.

He didn't need a pay rise he could barely keep. He needed to know the band was there before the money arrived, not after.

The rate isn't the problem. Not knowing it's there is.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and tax legislation is subject to change.

26/08/2026

When their father died at 71, the pension he left could have paid his two daughters an income for decades, entirely free of income tax. A deadline nobody mentioned turned it into taxable income for the rest of their lives.

He was 71, so under 75. That single fact mattered more than anyone realised. Because he died before 75, whatever his daughters drew from the inherited pension could have been tax-free, permanently.

There was one condition. The pension had to be moved into their names, into beneficiary drawdown, within two years of his death.

Nobody flagged it. Between the funeral, probate, and a provider that took months to respond to anything, the two years slipped by. By the time the paperwork was finished, the window had closed.

Now every pound they draw is taxed as their own income, stacked on top of what they already earn. Both work, and one is a higher-rate taxpayer, so for her a large share of every withdrawal simply disappears in tax, year after year, from a pension that was meant to pass tax-free.

This isn't about being forced to take the money out in a hurry. It's a silent two-year clock that starts on the date of death, whether or not anyone is watching it.

And it's about to matter more. From April 2027, unused pensions count towards the estate for inheritance tax. The income-tax trap that caught these two was already there, untouched by that reform, and now more families will be handling pensions, probate and deadlines all at once.

I see this exact situation across London and the Thames Valley: families still grieving, with a filing deadline nobody told them about.

This is a fictional example provided solely for illustrative purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and tax legislation is subject to change.

Address

Otford
Sevenoaks
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Website

https://www.quilter.com/edward-janes

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