UNLIKE other taxes, UK Inheritance Tax (IHT) follows you around the world, regardless of where you may reside.  This is because it is based on domicile, not residence, and it can be harder than you realise to shake off your British domicile status.  Many British expatriates remain liable to IHT even if they have lived abroad for many years.  Here’s some recent news on IHT. IHT thresholdWhile the threshold normally increases each year, it has been frozen at £325,000 since April 2009.  This year’s March budget confirmed it will not improve until April 2015.  ... 1 comment

 BRITISH Foreign Minister Alistair Burt, giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee regarding Iran's nuclear programme, has warned that the country already has weapons which could hit British forces in Cyprus and Afghanistan, and was now seeking to acquire the nuclear bomb.Burt also highlighted concern over Iran's missile programme after Prime Minister David Cameron said last week it appeared to be seeking an intercontinental ballistic missile force in the Middle East with 200-300 medium range missiles, including the Shabab 3 that has been tested to hit targets at a distance of 2,000 km.''To put this into perspective, Cyprus and UK troops in Afghanistan fall within that range with Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ... 6 comments

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday that the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by an American soldier should not deter them from their mission to secure the country ahead of a 2014 NATO withdrawal deadline.In Washington, President Barack Obama said after meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron he did not anticipate any "sudden" change in U.S. plans for the pace of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.Panetta arrived in Afghanistan amid heightened tensions over the killings. At around the time he landed at a major NATO airbase, an Afghan man drove a stolen pickup trucks at high speed onto a runway ramp and crashed into a ditch, Pentagon officials said... 1 comment

A BRITISH soldier has been jailed for four years for raping a British university student in Ayia Napa last summer.Private Sam Trussler, 25 and single, showed little emotion as the criminal court in Larnaca passed sentence yesterday.Rape carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.But the judge decided to show "maximum leniency" after Trussler's lawyer argued earlier this week that his client was "a very successful soldier" who had served in Afghanistan and had no previous criminal record.Dressed in black trousers and a white shirt, Trussler left the small courtroom flanked by policemen to begin his sentence 30 miles away in Nicosia... 12 comments