Anne Robinson has detailed how she has plans to help her family to avoid paying inheritance tax on her £50 million fortune after she dies.
The former Weakest Link host, 79, who is currently dating the Queen’s ex husband Andrew Parker Bowles, has enjoyed a decades long broadcast career and owns a Grade II-listed barn in the Cotswolds, another home on Fifth Avenue in New York and a third property in The Hamptons.
In the UK, inheritance tax is charged at 40 per cent on estates worth over £325,000 with a higher threshold for homes that are passed on to direct descendants such as children or grandchildren.
Speaking to Saga magazine, Robinson revealed she has already “spread” her £50 million fortune across her family members to save her assets from going to the “taxman”.
The presenter is mother to daughter Emma Wilson, 43, and has two grandchildren; Hudson, 14, and Parker, 13.
“I’ve given it all away. I don’t want the taxman to have it,” she said. “I’ve spread it about quite a lot, to the children. They may as well enjoy it now.”
Robinson added she has “genuinely no idea” if her net worth is £50 million but said she “can’t think there’s anything I really want except my good health and the family happiness.”
The UK has a “seven year rule” that states if a beneficiary receives an inheritance gift less than seven years before the bestower’s death they still pay inheritance tax.
Gifts given three years before the giver’s death are taxed at 40 per cent, while anything gifted up to the seven year mark are charged on a sliding scale known as “taper relief”.
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It is not known exactly when Robinson distributed her £50m fortune.
The former Weakest Link host has lived in the Cotswolds since the 1980s and downsized from a £3.5 million eight bedroom mansion to a Grade II-listed converted 18th-century barn in 2005.
After splitting from her husband John Penrose in 2007, it was revealed Robinson had installed a ground-floor guest wing called the “I Hate My Husband Suite” in the converted barn by the MailOnline.
Elsewhere in the interview, the presenter confirmed that she is in a relationship with the Queen’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.
“Yes. Full stop. Mind your own business,” she said.
Parker Bowles married Camilla in 1973 and they had two children together, Tom and Laura, before divorcing in 1995. The King divorced from Diana, Princess of Wales in 1996, and married Camilla in April 2005.
Parker Bowles remarried garden designer Rosemary Dickinson in 1996, and they were together until Dickinson’s death in 2010.
Robinson reflected on returning to dating in her seventies after being single for more than a decade, following her divorce from her second husband, John Penrose, in 2007.
She told Saga: “I’d been out of the game for so long. And also I don’t drink. If you don’t drink, you’re not as reckless are you?
“I’m a great believer in surprising yourself by taking risks. Personally and professionally. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If the worst that can happen is you get some egg on your face, that’s not terrible is it?”
The interview is in June’s issue of Saga magazine