SIPPS was killed off as a way to invest in residential property free of tax, writes David Lawrenson. Or was it!

Well, yes it was..... almost!

Before the Chancellor, Gordon Brown did his famous U turn the way was open for investors to put things like individual residential properties, including buy to let housing into a SIPP along with wine and race horses into a SIPP.

However, at the end of December last year there was the famous turn around.

No doubt this was prompted by the sudden realisation that all of a sudden there was going to be a big loss of tax money, a lot of which would have gone to the already well off, as well as fears that many less well off investors would have gambled a large pot of their money on just one or two houses.