Mara is a partner in the private client and tax team.
She advises on a range of wealth planning matters affecting successful individuals, entrepreneurs and their families. This includes high net worth individuals in respect of their tax, trust and estate planning, whether they are either non-UK domiciled or non-UK resident, or both. She has acquired extensive experience in advising clients on the reorganization of foreign holding structures owning UK residential properties so as to minimise UK tax exposure.
Mara advises on pre-immigration remittance planning for new arrivals, ongoing tax and succession planning during UK tax residence as well as pre-deemed domiciled planning for long term resident individuals, involving amongst others, the establishment of excluded property trusts, treaty reliance in the context of international Wills and relocation advice.
Her advice often focuses on issues involving double taxation treaties which the UK has signed with several counterparts (both for income and capital gains tax purposes as well as inheritance and succession tax) and on the regularization of undeclared offshore tax liabilities, in the past via the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility and, more recently, thorough the Worldwide Disclosure Facility.
She is a native Italian speaker and has an Italian law degree but re-trained and qualified as an English solicitor. Because of her background, she has experience of advising on the interaction between common law and continental European elements both in connection with trust structures and estate planning and routinely advises Italian and other Continental European clients on matters impacting their wills and succession planning in the UK. In particular, over the years, her practice has focused on advising clients on the UK tax implications of European style usufruct arrangements created over foreign assets as well as on European insurance bonds issued by insurance companies based in Continental Europe. This includes advising on the traps as well as on some of the planning opportunities these instruments/investment wrappers can provide from a UK tax perspective, including inheritance tax, capital gains tax, income tax and stamp duty land tax.
Mara is the UK representative for International Succession Network (ISN), which assists individuals, family offices and other professional advisers on international succession matters around the world.