Edna is an Associate in the Tax & Trusts and Wills & Estates teams.
Edna has been working in the legal sector for 56 years. She started her career working in the Trustee & Income Tax department of a national clearing bank, where she obtained the Trustee Diploma of the Institute of Bankers, and then with a firm of Chartered Accountants, which progressed following various mergers from a small high street practice to an international firm.
Supporting executors, beneficiaries, trustees and other individuals on all aspects of their tax affairs and on the practicalities of the day-to-day running of different types of trust. Including providing advice on how a client’s affairs ought to be organised to maximise tax efficiency, reviewing existing trust arrangements to ensure they continue to be fit for purpose from a tax point of view, offering guidance to trustees on the mechanics of dealing with trust funds, compiling annual trust accounts and final estate accounts, as well as completing tax returns.
Key experience includes dealing with family trusts and in reviewing existing trust arrangements to ensure tax efficiency.
Recent examples of how Edna has supported clients include:
- helping to restructure a discretionary trust with assets of more than £1 million, so that rather than the trust paying tax on income at 45 per cent, the beneficiaries paid tax at the basic rate of 20 per cent;
- successfully recovering a tax rebate for a beneficiary who had failed to appreciate their entitlement to seek a tax refund;
- managing the estate accounts for a number of connected estates, where money had been left to successive beneficiaries who had all died before the accounts relating to their respective inheritances could be finalised; and
- reviewing the trust accounts for an existing trust and advising the trustees and beneficiaries on their entitlement to claim allowances to reduce their overall tax liability.