Stop worrying about paying inheritance tax (IHT) on your second home or holiday home – give it away now and pay rent to your family or loved ones to continue to enjoy the use.

This way, you wipe out the 40% IHT bill when you die and the property passes to the beneficiaries of your will.

More than 500,000 million people are estimated to have a second home or holiday home in the UK or overseas.

Many couples will have much, if not all, of their IHT exempt threshold - £624,000 - eaten in to by the value of their first home

If the second home was gifted now and the former owners paid a commercial rent for the few weeks a year they spend there, the lucky recipients will not pay any IHT unless you die within seven years of handing over the gift.

In this case, IHT is paid on a sliding scale, reducing to nil over the seven years.

For example, if a £250,000 holiday home is inherited, and the whole value falls outside the IHT exempt amount of the estate, the tax is 40% of £250,000 or £100,000.

If the holiday home owner gifted the property and paid their beneficiaries £3,000 a year to spend a month there each year, it would take 33 years to match the IHT bill. The only tax paid by the people receiving the gifted property would be income tax on the rents received.