Shuffling Assets

There is a special place in the Great British Hall of Hypocrisy for the people who shuffle their assets into a trust so the council pays their care fees, then go online to shriek about council tax going up. It is the financial equivalent of nicking the neighbour’s logs, burning them, then complaining that the valley smells smoky.

The glossy adverts tell you to “protect your legacy”, as if you are the final custodian of a minor duchy. What it really means is this: hide your house so the rest of the village pays your bill. Dress it up as prudence if you like. It is freeloading with better fonts.

Those who do it call themselves responsible. In reality they force the bill onto the same teaching assistants, carers, posties and bin crews they will later blame for “inflationary local taxation”. They create the shortfall, and then throw a tantrum when the council tries to fill it. The audacity could power a small English town.

And it is always the people perched on six figures of untaxed housing equity who shout loudest. They clutch the property like a holy relic, insist the public purse should bankroll their twilight years, then howl when the public purse has to be topped up. They drain the reservoir and then complain that someone ought to fix the drought.

Meanwhile, services collapse around them. Care homes on the brink. Social care staff earning less than supermarket starters. Roads crumbling. Councils declaring bankruptcy. But at least the family home is safe for little Tarquin and Jocasta to inherit, which seems to matter more than the community that keeps them alive.

And the pattern is tediously familiar. Break the system. Deny you broke it. Rage at the consequences. When opinion is given the same status as truth, the culprits always recast themselves as victims. In this case, victims of the very tax rise they engineered by playing pass the parcel with their assets.

The good news is that the fix is not complicated. It just requires honesty, which is unfortunately in short supply whenever inheritance is involved.

Assets should count. All of them. If you put your £400k house in a trust, it should still be treated as yours for means testing. The seven year rule should be reworked so you cannot hide wealth with a bit of paperwork and a wink. Councils should be able to check land records and trust registers automatically, not rely on declarations from people who suddenly claim to own nothing but a two seater sofa and a Labrador.

And if you truly want fairness, cap the lifetime care liability instead of encouraging the wealthy to dodge the system. Let everyone know they will pay, say, £70k maximum, and after that the state steps in. Predictable for families. Sustainable for councils. No incentive for gaming. Just basic fairness.

Add a simple rule: if you hide your assets, the council claws back the cost from your estate later, so the rest of us are not left footing your bill. And mandate a warning on those adverts: “Avoiding the means test shifts your care costs to other taxpayers.” A bit like the warnings on cigarette packets, but aimed at the financially pious.

Because if you want to pass the house on to the children, fine. But do not expect every other household in the parish to pay for your long term care while you protect the bricks. That is not “legacy planning”. It is feudalism with legal stationery.

And the final insult? They still think they are the responsible ones, while everyone else is subsidising their golden years.