
£69m unclaimed Child Trust Funds in Wales, charity says
Nearly half of these accounts (46.1 per cent) belong to young people from low-income backgrounds.
The Share Foundation is calling for automatic payments of these funds to eligible account holders once they turn 21.
Gavin Oldham, chairman of trustees at The Share Foundation, said: "Child poverty is becoming one of the big issues of our time.
"We need to break the cycle of deprivation which is why, over the past 12 years, we have been committed to establishing starter capital accounts for young people in care and helping young people from low-income backgrounds access Child Trust Funds they never even knew existed.
"These initiatives are delivering positive outcomes exactly when families need them most."
The charity has already helped more than 85,000 young people access at least £165 million in matured CTFs.

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Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
How being an accidental landlord could land you with a surprise tax bill when you sell
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'That can mean a sizeable CGT bill, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds, which often comes as a nasty surprise if you weren't expecting it.' Plenty of people choose to rent their homes out for a while, rather than sell, according to Wood. 'Maybe they've moved in with a partner, taken a job elsewhere, or just don't think it's the right time to sell,' he adds. 'It often feels like a short-term, low-risk choice. But once you move out, the tax position shifts. 'You start losing the relief you get for living there, and the longer it's rented, the more of the gain becomes taxable.' Can capital gains tax wipe out rental profit? Ask a buy-to-let investor what has made them more money over past decades: rent or house price growth? The answer will invariably be house prices. Take a city like Manchester for example. Property prices there have almost doubled over the past 10 years, rising from £131,000 in May 2015 to £257,000 in May this year, according Land Registry figures. This means the average property in Manchester has risen in value by £12,600 a year on average over the past decade. Meanwhile average rents, which were £815 a month in the city in 2015 are now £1,143 per month, according to Zoopla's data. This means the average property has gone from making £9,780 a year to £13,716 a year in rent - but that's before tax, letting agent fees and any upkeep costs. Capital gains tax can be charged on any profit made on an asset that has increased in value, when someone comes to sell. It is the gain that is taxed, not the total amount of money they receive. For example, someone who doubles their house price from £131,000 to £257,000 will pay 24 per cent CGT on the £126,000 gain, though there is a £3,000 tax free annual allowance. While the CGT bill is unlikely to wipe out all rental profits, there are situations where it might - particularly if house prices suddenly take off in an area. For example, someone who purchased in London in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, but moved in with a partner and kept their home to rent may have found themselves in this predicament. Between May 2009 and May and May 2016, average London prices rose from £321,000 to £627,000. That's a £306,000 gain over a seven-year period averaging out at £43,715 a year. Someone in this situation selling in May 2016 would have faced a 28 per cent CGT bill at that time, albeit with a £11,100 annual allowance. That means in such a scenario they would have potentially incurred a £82,572 CGT bill on the sale. 'This catches more people out than you might think,' says Andy Wood of Tax Natives. 'If your rental income's been fairly low, but the property's gone up in value, you could still face a large CGT bill when you sell. 'We've seen cases where landlords earned £3,000 a year in rent but paid £30,000 or more in tax when they sold. That's enough to wipe out all the rental gains – and then some. 'Lettings relief used to help with this, but it was heavily cut back in 2020. Now, most of the gain will be taxed at 18 per cent or 24 per cent, depending on your income. 'That's a big hit for something that might have started off as a more of a stopgap solution.' However, it's worth pointing out that when someone moves out of their main home, they won't forfeit all their CGT relief. They will lose it for the years the property is let out, so when they sell they'll need to work out the proportion of time they lived in the home compared to the years it was let out. PRR also applies in full for the last nine months of ownership, whether or not someone lives at the property - provided the property was their main residence at some point. For example, if someone bought a property in 2010 and sold it in 2025, that's 15 years or 180 months in total. If they lived there for 10 years (120 months), they'd get PRR relief for 129 months (the 120 they lived there plus nine bonus months). That means 71 per cent of any gain would be completely tax-free. If they decided not to sell the property and rent it out, then only the remaining 29 per cent of the gain, representing the rental period, would be subject to capital gains tax. Eamon Shahir, founder of the online accountancy service Taxd Can it still make sense to let out your previous home? Ultimately, avoiding a potential CGT bill should not be the main reason for making a decision about whether to keep a property, rather than selling it. If someone could benefit from the rental income and feel the home will increase in value in the future, then there is arguably a strong reason to keep it as an investment. 'CGT is not necessarily a deal-breaker,' says Shahir of Taxd. 'It really depends on each person's specific situation, and once you understand how CGT works, keeping a property as a rental can still make perfect financial sense. 'And, with CGT, you're only ever taxed on the gain in the property's value, so you're never actually worse off for having owned it. 'The question is whether the rental income plus remaining capital growth makes it worthwhile. He adds: 'It often works well to let your property if you expect continued property price growth, rental yield after tax looks attractive, or you bought the property years ago and have already banked significant tax-free gains having lived there. 'On the other hand, it might not work if your property has already seen most of its gains and values are now stagnant or rental yields are poor.' There are also certain rule quirks that will benefit some people more than others, according to Shahir. 'Expats have a major advantage as CGT is only calculated on gains since 2015, which can make huge savings,' he says. 'And, if you move abroad for work, and then come back to live in your property - you will still qualify for PRR. 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If you're ready to find your next mortgage, why not use This is Money and L&C's online Mortgage Finder. It will search 1,000's of deals from more than 90 different lenders to discover the best deal for you.


Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Child Benefit payments will stop for thousands of parents unless they act now
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Times
18 hours ago
- Times
The inheritance tax headache coming for the middle class
Tens of thousands of families will be pulled into paying inheritance tax as the government goes ahead with its raid on pensions, despite fierce opposition from the industry. From April 2027 pension pots will be included in the value of your estate for inheritance tax purposes. The change was first announced in the budget in October, leading to warnings from hundreds of pension companies, financial advisers and tax firms that it would create an administrative nightmare for grieving families. 'It's a horrible outcome. Not only are lots of grieving families going to pay far more tax, but alongside that they are going to have complex paperwork to deal with,' said Andrew Tully from the investment firm Nucleus. 'And it's not just something that will affect the super-wealthy. Frozen thresholds and rising asset prices mean that inheritance tax is already more of a burden on the middle class, and this will only be exacerbated by charging inheritance tax on pensions, too.' Anything left to a spouse or civil partner, including pensions from 2027, is exempt from inheritance tax and couples can pass on any unused allowances to each other, giving them a total of £1 million to pass on inheritance tax-free. Under the new rules, 'personal representatives' will be responsible for dealing with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and paying any inheritance tax due on pensions. This will be whoever is named as the executor in the will, usually a family member or a solicitor. This will involve finding all the deceased's pension pots, contacting each firm and getting accurate valuations of those pots at the date of death. The representative must then calculate any tax liability and co-ordinate with the pension beneficiary to decide how the tax will be paid — from the estate, the pension itself, or through the pension firm. All this needs to be done within six months of the person's death, which is when the tax is due. Campaigners have pressed the government to extend the deadline to 12 or 24 months in cases involving pensions because of the added complexity. Rachel Vahey from the investment firm AJ Bell said that the process could end up being so complicated and confusing that families, fearful of ending up on the wrong side of HMRC, would pay for help. Families may also face delays in getting their money because pension firms could withhold up to 40 per cent of a pension's value until they are certain that no tax is owed. • Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts At the moment most people inheriting a pension, including spouses or civil partners, pay income tax on the money, unless the pension holder died before they were 75. The government has confirmed that this will continue even after inheritance tax is applied, meaning that some families face a double tax hit that could leave them paying an effective tax rate of up to 90 per cent on inherited pension money. For example, a higher-rate taxpayer inheriting a pension worth £100,000 from a £600,000 estate would lose £40,000 to inheritance tax, leaving £60,000. If they were taxed at their income tax rate of 40 per cent on that sum, a further £24,000 would go to HMRC, leaving just £36,000 — an effective tax rate of 64 per cent. For a top-rate taxpayer, the figure rises to 67 per cent. If the pension assets push an estate above £2 million (at which point the extra £175,000 you get if you leave your main home to a direct descendant is gradually reduced), the total tax burden on an inherited pension could climb to 90 per cent because of the lost allowance and high income tax rates. • 'My reward for being a good saver? A £1,000 tax bill' About 5 per cent of estates paid inheritance tax last year and the Office for Budget Responsibility, the official forecaster, expects this to double to 10 per cent by 2030 because of the changes to pensions. The amount paid in inheritance tax is expected to boom too, from £8.4 billion by the end of this tax year to £14.3 billion by the turn of the decade. Pension assets alone are expected to generate £1.5 billion a year. But the consultancy LCP believes that this figure significantly underestimates the impact of the tax raid. Its forecast suggests that pension-related inheritance tax could raise as much as £3 billion a year. Its analysis factors in the surge in savers transferring from the old final-salary (defined benefit) pensions to defined contribution pensions (which offer more flexibility but where the amount you get in retirement is not guaranteed). Since 2015 more than 100,000 have moved pots into pensions that will now be subject to tax. Financial advisers are already seeing a surge in demand for estate-planning tools, such as insurance policies and trusts, as families look to protect their heirs and manage tax liabilities. One option is life insurance that will cover the inheritance tax you expect your beneficiaries to pay, and to place it in a trust. This keeps the insurance payout outside your estate. 'Clients are looking at whole-of-life insurance, written into a trust,' said Lucie Spencer from the wealth manager Evelyn Partners. 'It means the funds are there to pay the IHT bill and your family does not need to borrow money or sell assets to get probate.' St James's Place (SJP), a wealth manager, is expecting a rise in the use of what is known as gift inter vivos insurance — policies that have to be written into a trust, and which will cover any inheritance tax due on gifts made before you die. If you make a gift and then live another seven years, no inheritance tax is due on the value of that gift, but if you die before, the beneficiary could face a bill. The value of a gift inter vivos policy tapers down in the same way that the tax due on a gift decreases over the seven years after it is given. Tony Mudd from SJP said the number of the firm's financial advisers looking into such products had doubled since last year. • On £100k and struggling: why it's hard being a Henry Bryony Cove from the London law firm Farrer & Co said: 'All these things are part of the patchwork of estate planning, and I imagine we will see an increase in people using these. 'It's crucial to get some guidance, either professional or from Citizens' Advice, as it's quite a complicated system. Make sure you've spoken to someone who knows what they are doing.' The Treasury said: 'We continue to incentivise pension saving for its intended purpose — of funding retirement instead of being openly used as a vehicle to transfer wealth. More than 90 per cent of estates each year will continue to pay no inheritance tax after these and other changes.'