The change from one tax year to the next provides a great opportunity to make sure your financial affairs are arranged as efficiently as possible. This includes checking you’ve taken advantage of all your allowances in the current tax year and ensuring you’ve maximised your opportunities as the new one starts.

Your tax arrangements will help your long-term financial planning. We’ve highlighted some of the areas that you might want to consider:

ISAs

• Make sure you’ve used your 2018/19 ISA allowance (£20,000). This can be fully invested in cash if required.
• The Junior ISA (JISA) allowance for 2018/19 is £4,260, increasing to £4,368 in 2019/20.

Pensions

• Remember, pension contributions can be used in your financial planning to help reduce your income tax liability.
• Annual allowance carry forward: if you have exceeded the standard annual allowance (or tapered annual allowance), you may be eligible to utilise any unused allowance from the three previous tax years – up to £40,000 in each of the 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 tax years).
• Money purchase annual allowance (MPAA): this is £4,000 for 2018/19. It can’t be carried forward so, if applicable, use it or lose it.

Income tax

• Independent taxation: ensure assets/income are split wherever possible between married couples and civil partners, to maximise the use of personal allowances/ reduce or eliminate the Child Benefit Charge and possibly to move income to a lower tax band.
• Employers/business owners: consider paying salary/bonuses/dividends before 6 April 2019 to use up any personal allowances, basic rate band or dividend allowances.

Capital gains tax

• Consider realising gains, or losses, to reduce gains to the level of the annual CGT exempt amount (£11,700 per person in 2018/19). The CGT allowance can’t be carried forward.

Inheritance Tax

• The IHT nil rate band is £325,000 and remains so in 2019/20. Make maximum use of IHT gifting, where appropriate, before the new tax year.

Please contact your Financial Planner if you would like to discuss your end of year tax planning in greater depth.