I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you, the young seventh duke – Hughie to his friends – hardly needs more luck than has already come his way in the form of the £10 billion Grosvenor property empire in London and elsewhere.
When the playboy second duke known as ‘Bend’Or’ died in 1953, Pimlico had to be sold to pay record death duties. But the Grosvenor family has taken a firmer grip on tax planning since then, their fortune multiplying despite the dukedom passing through three cousins to reach the father of today’s incumbent, who inherited via reportedly tax-proof trusts in 2016 and should have little to fear from a Labour regime.
In other stately drawing rooms, however, teacups are rattling. ‘Owners of some of the UK’s most valuable estates have fast-tracked the transfer of property to their heirs’ for fear of inheritance tax tightening, says the Financial Times. Though Labour says it won’t scrap IHT relief for farmland, the FT quotes a survey that found 42 per cent of landowners had no succession plan in place. Better get one quick, however louche your eldest son.
For other households, the pressing issue will be Labour’s 20 per cent VAT grab on school fees. Should you sell the Canaletto to your oligarch neighbour and phone the bursar of St Custard’s with an offer to pay all the grandchildren’s fees upfront before 4 July? Maybe the oligarch’s not so flush now his non-dom status has been abolished by Jeremy Hunt. And what chance St Custard’s itself will survive? Many lower-ranked private schools will fail as a result of the VAT impact on pupil numbers – Alton School in Hampshire being first to go, citing ‘adverse political and economic factors’.
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