"Is it really going to be the case that, if they need residential care, their contribution will be capped at £75k and the cats get the rest at the expense of taxpayers?"

That's the problem in a nutshell. Someone in our family is retired, has no children, is wealthy, and is going to leave a substantial fortune and a beautiful old house to a dog rescue charity. If he and his wife end up needing residential care, and their contributions are capped, the dogs will get a big pile of money, and you and I will be paying a share of the care home costs.

It makes little sense, and there's a long and convoluted legislative road to travel before it does.

I don't think it should be capped. I think spider9 had it right "do away with the Inheritance Tax Allowance altogether" and people should be paying for their own care if they have the sort of money you are all discussing.

Certainly those with a lot less are having to sell their modest homes when they are taken into care. I could name at least half a dozen of my (now former) neighbours who had to do just that. Social Services handled the sales.

As for 'throwing yourself on the tender mercies of the state...' I have an Aunt who is in one of those miserable 'care' homes. It's not the luxury you all seem to think. Social Services have placed her in a mixed home and she gets old men wandering in during the night because they've got the wrong room. The Home seems to have an overlying smell of urine. She is not allowed to have any money or valuables in her room (the pitiful pocket money allowance is kept in the office safe and she has to ask the owner to make any purchases) She hates it.

Nobody seems to appreciate that all these moves over the past few decades to use peoples own monies and assets to pay for age care has a pretty limited period over which it can save government spend on age care.

What's happening now is that less elderly people are considering it their duty to leave the family with all the wealth of their accumulated assets, and are choosing to cash in the equity of their assets for financially comfortable early retirement years while they are still active. Which of course in turn will leave them in need of the same total care costs as those that had never saved a penny.

That's the way I intend to finance my early active retirement years to make up the shortfall from the decades of tax raids and incompetent pension fund management. And then in 30 years time when that's considered the norm, and everyone is doing that, we'll be back to square one.

But hey ho, that won't be my problem when I'm sitting staring out on an increasingly scary and alien world from the safe windows of the care home, drooling and dribbling waiting for a call from God...

By my simple reasoning, there should be zero inheritance tax on money or assets, whatever the size pot left.

Tax has been paid in the accumulation of the money, tax is paid on the monies interest accumulation as savings. Tax is paid by whoever inherits it if they miser it away in a savings account and tax is paid on it if they spend it. But the biggest advantage is that if more is left to spend, it's spend keeps people in work, weather it's shop workers or building workers for your new extension, which in turn boosts the economy.

Snatching money while the dead are on the slab is counter productive in the long term, it only provides day to day pocket money for the government. And any government that's living hand to mouth isn't a good enough government.

How many times should the same money be taxed?