For 700 years, Haberdashers have found ways to give something back — through their schools, their trades, their time, and, for many, through what they chose to leave behind. It’s a tradition built quietly, gift by gift, into the fabric of the Company.
What’s less well known is that leaving a gift to a cause like the Haberdashers’ Foundation isn’t only good for the causes you care about — it can also be good for your own family’s finances.
Here’s the practical version. In the UK, anything left to a registered charity in your will is entirely free of inheritance tax. That’s straightforward enough. But there’s a second, less obvious benefit: if you leave at least 10% of your net estate to charity, the inheritance tax rate on the rest of your estate drops from 40% to 36%.
To put that in real terms: imagine an estate worth £500,000, with £325,000 of that sitting below the tax-free threshold. Ordinarily, the remaining £175,000 would be taxed at 40% — a bill of £70,000. But leave 10% of that £175,000 (£17,500) to charity, and the rate on the rest falls to 36%. Your family pays less tax, and a cause you believe in receives a meaningful gift — often at a much smaller real cost to your estate than the headline figure suggests.
This is exactly the kind of decision our free will-writing partnership with Octopus Legacy is designed to make easier. As you go through the process — whether online, by phone or in person — their team can talk you through how a gift to the Haberdashers’ Foundation, or any charity close to your heart, might fit into your plans, tax included.
As ever, this is entirely your decision, and there’s no obligation to leave anything to anyone but your own family and the people you love. But if you’re already reviewing your will this Free Wills Month, it costs nothing extra to ask the question.
Write your free will at octopuslegacy.com/HABERDASHERS, or call 020 4525 3605 quoting Haberdashers’ Foundation.
To talk through what a gift to the Foundation could support, contact the Director for Charities, Andrea Van Sittart here.
*This article is intended as general information, not tax or legal advice. Individual circumstances vary, and members are encouraged to seek independent advice where appropriate.
