Art, Heritage and Tax Lawyers

With the changes to the availability of some Inheritance Tax reliefs for the owners of landed estates, maximising the use of available reliefs for cultural and heritage objects is an important consideration for many clients.

Our Private Client advisors have extensive experience in advising owners of works of art, chattels, historic houses, and estates on Inheritance Tax planning and succession. They work closely with our Estates and Land and Planning colleagues to provide a cross-sector service to clients who own or manage art and heritage property.

We act for some of the UK’s most renowned country estates and understand that the issues of the burden of tax, public access, succession planning, and continuing stewardship for future generations are all important considerations for families who own heritage property.

We advise collectors, families, trustees and executors on a broad range of art and heritage property matters to help clients own and manage culturally significant assets, pass these collections to the next generation in a tax efficient manner, as well as make transfers of cultural objects to national institutions.

This includes securing Conditional Exemption, submitting Acceptance in Lieu applications and establishing Heritage Maintenance Funds, as well as advising on existing obligations under historic Estate Duty regimes. We work with auction houses, agents, and art dealers to achieve the best outcome when art and cultural property is sold.

We also have experience in highly technical areas of heritage work, such as the effect of uncertain provenance, artistic attribution and unsaleable objects and the impact of these issues on saleability, succession, and tax consequences.