The Court of Appeals' recent decision in the Robert Gaines-Cooper case does not represent a change in UK residency law, Withers Worldwide notes. Instead, the decision reinforces what has always been good advice for those seeking to lose UK residency: Make a complete break with the UK and keep visits to a bare minimum.
Residency rules in the 1973 IR20 booklet were in question in the Gaines-Cooper case, but the HMRC6 guidance of April 2009 may be more relevant now to those wishing to lose UK residency, according to Macfarlanes. However, the new guidance has been described as deliberately vague and a work in progress. The authors argue that the time has come for a comprehensive statutory residence test like that of the United States.
Britain's new reduction of capital procedure provides a flexible and inexpensive way for family-owned businesses to restructure or return value to shareholders. This report from Withers provides practical examples of how the procedure can be used in paying dividends, demergers, share buy-backs as well as paying up unpaid amounts on shares and dissolving a company.
The unified managed household, the most recent extension of overlay portfolio management, extends overlay management services to households with multiple accounts, multiple individuals and multiple custodians. This paper from Natixis explains the evolution of overlay management and describes the benefits of the unified managed household, particularly for intergenerational wealth transfer.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear a case this spring that addresses employees' right to free speech and privacy on company-owned cell phones. Among the questions raised is whether employers have the right to examine employees' cell phone records and obtain lists of their cell-phone conversations. Willis North America explores the issue and offers suggestions for employers to keep from violating their workers' Fourth Amendment rights.
New Philanthropy Capital shares its system for analyzing charities to help funders identify individual charities' strengths and weaknesses and make thoughtful decisions about how to allocate their resources. The organization's approach examines six elements related to a charity: activities, results, leadership, people and resources, finances and ambition.
Families need to learn how to talk about money openly and participate in saving, spending and giving together. The result, Silver Bridge Advisors says, will be an increase in the number of financially thoughtful children in the world, a greater ability for the next generation to use their wealth responsibly, and an increased likelihood that family values will endure for generations.
While a life insurance agent/broker may be a valuable resource and advisor, the very nature of today's products and compensation structure, coupled with the lack of transparency, create substantial conflicts of interest between what is best for the client and what is best for the agent. What are the conflicts, how meaningful are they and how can families protect themselves? This paper from Pelagos Advisors advocates a fiduciary standard for agents to ensure accountability.
Analysis by Spring Mountain Capital shows that increased spending will profoundly jeopardize the long-term health of endowments. This paper proposes a framework for analyzing spending decisions that can be of use to endowments and other types of investors who need to balance long-term growth objectives with short-term spending needs.
Proposed changes to information reporting on IRS Form 1099 would place a greater burden on businesses to accurately identify income taxable to others and assess larger penalties on businesses that fail to do so. In this report, Vogel Consulting details the cost of non-compliance and offers suggestions of what businesses can do to be prepared.