The tax affairs of Spear’s readers are often highly complex. Holding business interests, assets and property in several jurisdictions, leading international lives and earning money in several countries means that simply calculating the correct amount of tax payable, never mind minimising it, is a huge undertaking.
Accountants, lawyers, investigations specialists, offshore structure administrators and, ultimately, probate and wills lawyers all have their vital roles to play in the smooth running of a HNW life as it interacts with government funding.
The Spear’s Tax & Trust Indices will help you find the very best available in what one adviser succinctly described as ‘an unpredictable tax landscape’.
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How the tax and trust landscape is changing in 2025
Nearly a year on from the Labour government’s first budget in October 2024, IHT remained the top tax topic in 2025 as advisers and Britain’s wealthy prepare for punitive change in April 2026.
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From April 2026, the IHT relief available for assets qualifying for business relief and agricultural relief will be capped at £1 million, with the excess attracting 50 per cent relief – in effect producing a 20 per cent tax rate. Additionally, listed shares classified as unquoted shares, including AIM shares, will only qualify for 50 per cent rather than 100 per cent IHT relief.
Further changes due in April 2027 will apply inheritance tax to unspent pension pots, which is predicted to affect about 8 per cent of estates.
Explore the full 2025 Spear’s Tax & Trust Indices:
- Tax Lawyers
- Contentious Trust Lawyers
- Probate and Wills Lawyers
- Tax and Trust Barristers
- Accountants and Tax Advisers
- Trusts, Structuring and Offshore
By the end of the decade, the OBR’s latest Economic and Fiscal Outlook published in March 2025 estimates that the proportion of deaths subject to inheritance tax will rise from 5.1 per cent in 2022/23 to 9.5 per cent. This figure is before factoring in any further possible changes the government may introduce, such as the tightening of longstanding reliefs, which many now fear could be on the horizon.
There has been significant criticism of the IHT proposals, particularly from the business and farming community, but draft legislation published in July this year appeared to show the government is determined to push ahead with its IHT overhaul.
All this impending change has kept the UK’s tax experts incredibly busy. Our tax advisers tell us that, since the budget last year, almost every client has sought legal advice.
Tax advisers, at the vanguard of these changes, are already seeing the implications, some six months before they come into force. As April 2026 moves closer, land that can be sold is being sold, and assets ‘gifted’ before the patriarch or matriarch dies. For those with lots of land who do not want, or cannot, sell, they are asking how they can make the land productive and economically viable.
Margi Campbell at Saffery advises clients on their highland estates, encompassing vast amounts of land with little agricultural value. She says her clients are considering turning the land over for renewables – for example, windfarms, natural capital and carbon.
Another real-world impact of Reeves’ slated tax changes is the well-documented haemorrhaging of the UK’s rich. Much has been written about the millionaire exodus from British shores – and the tax experts in our index agreed that it is an exodus, but where are the wealthy going?
Bernadette Carey of Carey Olsen, says she has seen a notable rise in private client work in the Cayman Islands since she started nearly a decade ago. No one was living on the island 10 years ago; now, a significant proportion of her client base is in Grand Cayman. But not everyone with money is living in the Caymans. Robert Lindley of the island-based Conyers, said the firm was noticing an increase in families from Switzerland using offshore services.
Sean Bannister at Edwin Coe has seen clients relocate to Monaco, Dubai and Italy as a result of Labour policy, but explains this trend appears to be most apparent in younger generations; older people seem willing to stay in the UK regardless of tax policies.
And where the wealthy go, so do their ecosystem.
The evolving role of the family office
As private wealth grows at an unprecedented rate, family offices are evolving beyond passive preservation structures to more active wealth creation, including investment management expertise, advanced technology adoption and stronger governance frameworks, Christine Cairns at PwC notes, spurned on by a new, tech-savvy generation of super-rich, who want to do more with their money.
Family office numbers are booming, shaking things up and upscaling. PwC estimates that each year, another 1000 family offices popping up. Increasingly, multi-generational family offices want to shift away from a traditional structure, with a renewed focus on diversification, control and targeted returns.
The role of philanthropy
Philanthropy has long been a popular tax-efficient strategy and continues to gain in popularity, but how wealthy individuals give is changing. Donors are shifting towards strategic giving rather than simply making ad hoc charitable contributions, allowing for greater engagement and impact.
William Begley at Charles Russell Speechlys says he is seeing more clients wanting to set up charitable trusts. ‘I think people are still prepared to give back, and I’m seeing a lot of wealthy clients wanting to set up charitable entities to give a bit back which is lovely to see,’ he tells Spear’s. ‘I work very closely with our philanthropy colleagues to help them achieve that.’
Collaboration
Legal firms are increasingly employing accountants and in-house tax advisers who can advise their clients alongside tax lawyers.
Tax advice has become a central pillar of client service, with advisers and lawyers now working closely alongside teams in investigations, immigration, philanthropy and private client matters.
Payne Hicks Beach’s Melissa Solly, a chartered accountant and tax adviser who, unlike most of her colleagues at the private client firm, is not a lawyer, is a new addition to our index. She describes herself as ‘a bit of an odd one out at Payne Hicks Beach’ but often works collaboratively with the firm’s tax lawyers, pooling their knowledge, so that clients can ‘get more of their work done under one roof’.
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
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