What you say is correct insofar as it goes other than your assertion that the loophole is not a loophole and is not about to be plugged - but I’ll let that pass. The rest of my hasty posting was about my concern for the fact that the UK liabiloties were not covered and rather than bore you with my own diatribe I though it would be useful to throw the thing at our tax lawyers; so their response to your posting as follows and puts the icing on the cake of my first post:
As you are aware Rex the shares in the UK company will be subject to UK IHT @ 40% because it is an investment company thus no Business Property Relief
Also if the property is sold this is liable to Corporation tax on Capital gains at the lower or higher rate depending on the amount but both of them are higher than the CGT rate for an individual......
The Company having paid tax (and any Spanish taxes and duties payable by a vendor on disposal) will then be sitting on cash
There are three means of extraction
1 Dividend
2 Bonus under PAYE
3 Liquidation
4 Trust based extraction
Only 3 pays CGT at 18%, 1 and 2 are taxable in the usual way and using 4 results in no tax at all and no tax ever again in the future, capital or income, personal or business.
I do hope you will inform all your clients of these facts and pass them our contact details so we can button things up for them.
As for your €300,000 property clients I would be pleased to send you the briefing document for the solution if you’d let me have your email address.
Over to you
Regards