Tony Wickenden, managing director of Technical Connection, SJP comments on HMRC’s latest inheritance tax receipts:
“The latest HMRC stats on inheritance tax receipts reveal that with a total yield of £6.1 billion, £0.7 billion more was collected in the period between April 2021 and March 2022 than in the previous year.
“The reasons for this increase are not yet clear but key drivers of IHT yield include the number of deaths, the size of estates, the use of exemptions (notably the spouse exemption), the tax rate and the amount of a taxable estate taxed at the nil rate. The pandemic generally recovered asset values and the impact of the frozen nil rate band would be obvious places to look.
“We are set for continued “freezing” of the nil rate bands until April 2026 which, dependant on other factors, could well mean that more estates are subject to IHT. This, combined with the fact that IHT is a much disliked tax means that appetite for planning strategies to reduce and provide for the tax is likely to increase.”