The Equity Release Lie Exposed
As we know, some of the “Equity Releasers” were utilizing the insurance wrapper to cajole otherwise debt-free property owners to release the largest possible chunk of their wealth and give it to irresponsible banks so that they could mitigate the taxes (Inheritance and Wealth) and with clever “banking”, get a monthly salary, etc. Rothschild, Danske Bank, Landsbanki and Nordea, among others, used the Unit-Linked/Capital Assurance to tell the tale that those funds would be under the radar of the Spanish taxman, as Nordea put it, “Keeping it in the family – efficient tax planning”. But, since as early as 1999, the Spanish Tax Office had already plans for these schemes…when specifically stating that Inheritance Tax would apply in full, by repeating insistently, literally, that:
“ where policy holder and beneficiary are different, the amounts derived from the insurance will be subject to IHT in Spain”
I would also throw in article 18 of the Spanish Inheritance Tax 1999 Regulation which states that, in the event of non-residents for tax purposes (referring to the inheritors), the amounts derived from life insurance contracts will be taxed in Spain where the contracts were signed with Spanish insurance companies or signed in Spain with foreign insurance companies that operated in Spain.
Are these schemes therefore not a deliberate tax-defrauding deception designed to release precious equity that, thereafter and in the best of cases, got lost due to irresponsible management and in the worst, misappropriated?
Documents
The following documents are binding enquiries (consultas vinculantes) answered by the tax office proving the above. Please note they are in Spanish:
- Equity-Release-DGT-V0068-99-de-30-junio-1999.-DGTrib (PDF ~25Kb)
- Equity-Release–Cons.DGT-242003-de-4-marzo-2003.DGTrib (PDF ~25Kb)
- Equity-Release-DGT-32001-de-26-febrero-2001 (PDF ~25Kb)
- Equity-Release-Cons.DGT-192003-de-5-febrero-2003.DGTrib (PDF ~25Kb)
