Our content this month are as follows:-

• News
• Books We Have Read
• Lantern Tax and Trust Services
• Quote of the Month

We have a new member of staff who has joined us all the way from Scotland. Beverley Riddell has filled the gap left by Sam, who left us after the birth of her child. Beverley was born in Scotland but moved to the Midlands when she was 13, returned to Scotland to study where she acquired an HND in Business Management. She spent some time designing kitchens before she went to work for a firm of advisers in Edinburgh and enjoys fashion and designing her own clothes in the little spare time she has left after looking after her little girl Lauren, who is six. We are very pleased to have Beverley on the team.

In common with most businesses we will be closed over the Easter break on Good Friday and Easter Monday. Enjoy the holidays.

This month’s book recommendation comes courtesy of Nigel Botterill and is "Anyone Can Do It" by TV Dragon and serial entrepreneur, Duncan Bannatyne.

His is a great story of someone who did not do much until the age of 30 and then went on a journey which started with buying an ice cream van and finished up building more than one business worth tens of millions of pounds. The message that comes across in this book is that you can do anything you want to do if you truly believe you can do it.

The book is readily available at bookstores and Amazon, but if you have any difficulty finding it please contact jayne@indexfundadvisors.co.uk.

Graham Lawrence

• Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners
• Chartered Tax Adviser with the Institute of Taxation

Graham is ex-Inland Revenue and ex-accountancy profession, where he acquired an interest in the tax aspects of trusts and estates.

This is a slightly unusual niche for a tax practitioner, where advisers are usually interested in businesses and companies, and where estates are not well understood and trusts often get pushed to the back of the queue.

However, it remains difficult to find any well-advised and comfortably-off individual whose family does not use trusts at some time. These may be to protect assets for the future, or as part of an overall strategy for either holding family company shares now, or for planning to exit from the company tax-efficiently. And of course every family encounters estates!

It is not difficult to find

• Solicitors who are less than comfortable with the tax aspects of estates, and who are sometimes inclined to overlook tax certificates or tax-efficient transactions.

• People who do not understand all of the tax implications of a Deed of Variation, especially when used to set up a trust.

• Accountants who just don’t want to know about proper care of estates or trusts – they’re too busy looking after the trades and profits of the living clients!

• Lay trustees who think they are avoiding fees by “looking after a trust” (i.e. filling in a tax return) without any professional help, and who are oblivious to tax liabilities they could be reducing, legitimately avoiding, or heading towards – especially where a beneficiary lives in trust-owned property.

• People who think you can look after a discretionary trust without having any minutes of trustee meetings.


• Trustees who think they don’t need a set of trust accounts – because “I know what’s in the account and where the trust investments are”. (Imagine if they had a company and thought they could avoid preparing business accounts because they knew where the premises were and knew which bank account the transactions went through!)

Graham now uses his time, his contacts and his website, to educate people about such things, providing tax and accounts advice and assistance to executors and trustees, and to anyone concerned about taxes on gifts or inheritance.

Telephone: 0121 603 5152 Mobile: 07932 396 122
email: lanterntax@blueyonder.co.uk website: www.lanterntax.com

“Days are lost lamenting over last days. What you can do, or think you can do, begin it." - Goethe