"My mum was very ill and she couldn't move around any more, he said. She, by the end of her life, had her leg amputated and she could barely communicate. She was very, very ill. She loved her donkeys and I wanted her to be able to see her donkeys. I bought a field for 20,000 at the back of their house. I said, here's your field. It's yours for as long as you may live."
"I immediately gifted the land to my parents for as long as they should live but I did not transfer the legal title that remained with me. This language around gifting has led legal experts to suggest to the Sunday Times that a trust was created, which if it existed, could have helped him avoid any future inheritance tax liability."
Starmer bought a field behind his parents' house for £20,000 so his mother could keep donkeys and later sold the land for almost £300,000 in 2022. He retained legal title while his parents used the land. He failed to declare the interest to parliamentary authorities for several years and apologised. In a 2022 statement to the parliamentary standards commissioner he said he immediately gifted the land to his parents for as long as they lived but did not transfer legal title. Legal experts suggested the wording could imply a trust with potential inheritance tax implications, though the parents' estates did not appear large enough to trigger inheritance tax.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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