Inheritance-tax exposure in the accounts: your cue to refer

Inheritance tax is one of the few significant liabilities that builds up silently over decades and then lands entirely on people who are no longer alive to plan for it. It rarely surprises the accountant, though, because the ingredients are visible in the work you already do: the value of a home, the balance of savings and investments, business and property interests, and the steady accumulation of wealth on a personal file year after year. You can often see an estate drifting past the thresholds that trigger a large liability long before the client has given it a moment's thought.

This is a cue, not a task. You are not there to structure anyone's estate, and much of what mitigates inheritance tax sits firmly within regulated advice. But recognising that a client's estate has grown into a genuine exposure is squarely within your view, and it is a recognition most clients will never reach on their own.

The tell-tale patterns show up across the numbers you handle:

• A substantial main residence combined with meaningful savings and investments.
• An estate whose total value has quietly grown well beyond the available allowances.
• Clients with property portfolios or business interests on top of personal wealth.
• Ageing clients who have never mentioned any estate planning at all.
• Wealth accumulating faster than it is being used or passed on.

Each of these should prompt the same thought: has anyone helped this client think about what happens to their estate, and the tax that will fall on it? Where the answer is no, you have found a client who needs regulated help.

It is easy to offer a client a few well-known pointers about inheritance tax, and just as easy to stray into regulated advice while doing so. The mitigation strategies that genuinely matter often involve investments, protection, trusts and long-term arrangements that require a regulated firm to assess and implement. An informal steer from you can be incomplete, out of date, or simply outside your permitted scope, and it deprives the client of a proper plan.

Your contribution is different and, in its way, more valuable. You are frequently the first professional to notice that the exposure exists. Naming it clearly, and then ensuring it reaches someone qualified to act, is exactly the right use of your position. The technical solutions belong to the regulated firm.

The referral moment arrives whenever you can see an estate that has grown into a liability while the client remains unaware. You might say: from what I can see, your estate has grown to the point where there could be a significant inheritance-tax bill down the line, and there are things that can be done about it; that is not something I advise on, but I can introduce you to a firm that does.

That keeps you as the introducer throughout. You have made the client aware of a real issue without recommending any particular course of action, and you have pointed them to a vetted, regulated advice firm equipped to plan properly. The client hears foresight and care, not a sales pitch.

Inheritance tax touches mortality, family and money all at once, which is why people avoid it so completely. Clients will happily discuss this year's tax return and go decades without ever addressing what happens to their estate. Left alone, they simply never begin. That avoidance is precisely why a calm, factual prompt from a trusted accountant carries so much weight.

By raising it in your matter-of-fact way, you give the client permission to confront something they have been sidestepping. You are not forcing a decision; you are opening a door and pointing to the professionals who can walk them through it.

Through SmartPeer, turning an inheritance-tax observation into an introduction is a commission-only arrangement. You introduce the client to a regulated advice firm; that firm carries out the regulated planning; you receive a share of the resulting fee, typically a 60-70% member share, without advising on estate planning yourself.

The habit worth forming is to treat the growing estate as a prompt whenever it appears in your work. When you see wealth building past the thresholds and no plan in place, that is your cue. Most clients will never raise it. By raising it for them and routing it to a regulated firm, you serve them well and earn from the introduction.