{"id":33541,"date":"2026-01-28T12:32:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2026\/01\/28\/kick-off-2026-on-top-of-your-tax-numbers\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T16:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:41:04","slug":"kick-off-2026-on-top-of-your-tax-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2026\/01\/28\/kick-off-2026-on-top-of-your-tax-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Kick off 2026 on top of your tax\u00a0numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Start thinking about making the most of tax-efficient opportunities before the end of the 2025\/26 tax year <\/td>You can contribute as much as you like into your pension, but there\u2019s a limit on the amount of tax relief you will receive each year <\/td>You can make gifts worth up to \u00a33,000 in each tax year, these gifts will be exempt from IHT on your death, even if you die within 7 years <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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As the end of the 2025\/26 tax year approaches, it\u2019s the ideal time to ensure you\u2019re making the most of tax-efficient opportunities before the new financial year begins on 6 April 2026. Here\u2019s a reminder of three of the main tax planning opportunities:<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Your Individual Savings Account (ISA) <\/strong> <\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The ISA allowance is \u00a320,000 for the 2025\/26 tax year. You can put all the \u00a320,000 into a Cash ISA (until the allowance is cut in 2027), or invest the whole amount into a Stocks and Shares ISA. You can also mix and match as long as the combined amount doesn\u2019t exceed your annual ISA allowance. Junior ISAs work in the same way but the maximum annual investment is \u00a39,000 per child. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Your pension<\/strong> <\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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You can contribute as much as you like into your pension, but there is a limit on the amount of tax relief you will receive each year. The Annual Allowance is currently \u00a360,000. An individual can\u2019t use the full \u00a360,000 Annual Allowance where \u2018relevant UK earnings\u2019 are less than \u00a360,000, although your employer still could. You may be able to carry forward unused allowances from the past three years, provided you were a pension scheme member during those years. For every \u00a32 of adjusted income (total taxable income including all pension contributions) over \u00a3260,000, an individual\u2019s Annual Allowance is reduced by \u00a31 until the minimum Annual Allowance of \u00a310,000 is reached. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Gifting for IHT purposes<\/strong> <\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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You can make gifts worth up to \u00a33,000 in each tax year. These gifts will be exempt from IHT on your death, even if you die within seven years. You can carry forward any unused part of the \u00a33,000 exemption to the following year but if you don\u2019t use it in that year, the exemption will expire. Certain gifts don\u2019t use up this annual exemption, however, there is still no IHT due on them e.g. wedding gifts of up to \u00a35,000 for a child, \u00a32,500 for a grandchild (or great grandchild) and \u00a31,000 to anyone else. Individual gifts worth up to \u00a3250 per recipient per tax year are also IHT free. Under current HMRC rules, gifts outside the above categories normally cease to count for IHT purposes upon the donor\u2019s survival for seven years, with reductions in the event of death after at least three years. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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And don\u2019t forget about Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and your Divided Allowance! Time for an end of tax year review? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. The past is not a guide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be repeated.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Start thinking about making the most of tax-efficient opportunities before the end of the 2025\/26 tax year  You can contribute as much as you like into your pension, but there\u2019s a limit on the amount of tax relief you will receive each year  You can make gifts worth up to \u00a33,000 in each tax year, these gifts will be exempt from IHT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,89],"tags":[],"hd_content_source":[116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33603,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33541\/revisions\/33603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33541"},{"taxonomy":"hd_content_source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hd_content_source?post=33541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}