Now that I’m in my 90s, my thoughts increasingly hover around what I shall leave behind and what will become of it. As is typical of middle-class women who’ve had a career, there is a good deal of stuff: property, goods and chattels accumulated over decades, much of it now gathering dust in cupboards and corners, waiting to go. But where? And who decides?
I have already disposed of what are considered “significant papers” to the British Library. Of the rest, I have a proprietorial wish to in some way control what happens to things I have loved: I imagine favourite books going to favourite people and attractive jewellery hanging round attractive necks. I know such things can give genuine pleasure as I have myself inherited such. Yes, time to draw up the lists.
But on the bigger scale there is something else at work: inheritance tax is waiting. It routinely collects large sums from those with more than enough to know what to do with. This can surely only be a good thing. While we live in a country where people still die from the mould in inadequate housing, where over 3 million of our fellow citizens still live in fuel poverty, it is surely appropriate – not to say moral – for those whose talent and opportunity has brought them substantial riches to contribute to the country’s welfare.
For people like me it can feel like being squeezed of the last juice of a lemon. And there’s no fun in it. Paying taxes is not only tiresome but dull. Though there is a theory – and it is a particularly persuasive one – that by paying up we’re not merely funding some government department but furthering civic wellbeing.
That’s what the research shows. It points out that countries with less extremes of wealth have a happier population. People who live in Sweden and the Netherlands have apparently a more stable and satisfying life. Perhaps there is something in the relentless pursuit of money that thrives on neurosis and tension, and unwittingly makes people unhappy. Numerous novels and films base their plots on such assumptions. And I find them totally plausible.
I regard inheritance tax as an acceptable way of raising money to contribute to the efficient running of the state. How much better it would feel – gratifying to the conscience and life’s preferences – if such taxes could be hypothecated. I, like many others, would choose to see my money go to the NHS and those segments of the educational system that suit my political slant. On the other hand how many of us would be pleased to fund more armaments, or battleships, sewage cleaning strategies and the bonuses of CEOs whose agencies we don’t approve?
The dilemma is obvious enough: get rid of your money before you go, or settle resignedly to the state spending your inheritance tax exactly as it, not you, decides. Indeed, you can steadily let your money do good deeds as you live out your final years. There are around 169,000 charities registered with the Charity Commission in England and Wales – each of them, it seems, happy to send you colourful leaflets and persuasive accounts of soulful children, struggling oldies, useful boats, needy animals or collapsing buildings. Most donations to charities come in small amounts, culled, one imagines, from the spare resources of the pensioner community. We each have our own points of reference: schools, colleges, galleries, theatres, public gardens, all enjoyed and needing constant renewal. Choose your favourite and follow up on its activities; engage in public rows about how their money is used. Write to the papers; turn up at AGMs; make it a new part of your life, a mini late-life career.
Or you can simply become bountiful and scatter gold coins into the laps of friends and relations, so long as you know that gifts over £3,000 bestowed within seven years of your death will incur some inheritance tax. Just one warning, though: let your giving be the pleasure itself. Don’t use it with the subversive hope of gaining attention, friendship or loyalty. It won’t work, you’ll be disappointed and feel the money was misspent. It wasn’t: it was your hopes that were false.
Those born into wealth must surely get less thrill at inheriting even more of it than those with little who suddenly receive a modest windfall. The rich children of the rich will already have tax avoidance advice and share preferential decisions – not much fun to be had there. But when it comes to our own legacies, maximising the happiness among those with little will have your name blessed, even as any knowledge of your career and achievements dwindle into dust. Money gives you choices even as you give it away. It is one of life’s last pleasures.
Joan Bakewell is a broadcaster, writer and Labour peer
