Inheritance Tax statistics: call to action
Published 28 July 2022
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/inheritance-tax-statistics-call-to-action/inheritance-tax-statistics-call-to-action
1. Summary
The coverage of these statistics will need to change in future releases following a recent reporting requirement change for non-taxpaying estates qualifying as excepted. We would welcome feedback from users on our proposals to change these statistics in future as a result. Please email your feedback to personaltax.statistics@hmrc.gov.uk. Thank you in advance.
2. Background
Tables 12.2 - 12.5 of this release contain information about the asset composition of all estates required to notify HMRC of wealth transferred at death in order to obtain a grant of representation for the relevant tax year. Table 12.2 also includes these estates’ use of reliefs and exemptions, where relevant.
As set out in the background quality report, information about the composition of non-taxpaying estates who qualify as excepted in a particular tax year, as well as their use of reliefs and exemptions, is based on a sample of those estates required to complete IHT205 forms and send these to HMRC (C5 forms in Scotland). The equivalent information for estates which are not excepted is collected through IHT400 forms.
3. Issue
Following a recent reporting requirement change for deaths occurring after 1st January 2022, non-taxpaying estates that qualify as excepted are no longer required to complete IHT205 forms and send these to HMRC, as long as the deceased passed away after 1st January 2022 (C5 forms in Scotland).
As such, from the 2022 to 2023 tax year onwards, HMRC will hold no information about the composition of these estates, and will only hold limited information about these estates’ use of reliefs and exemptions as provided by the UK Courts Services. From that point on, no IHT205 or C5 forms will be available for sampling for statistical purposes.
As a result, the coverage of some of the tables in this statistical release will need to change. This will impact the statistics from the planned July 2025 release onwards.
The process for collecting information for statistical purposes using IHT400 forms received by HMRC will be unaffected.
4. Proposals
We have identified two different ways to adapt the statistics in this release, following these reporting requirement changes. These are either:
- continue to publish Tables 12.2 - 12.5 in their current format, but with reduced coverage. These statistics would now only include the compositional details of estates completing IHT400 forms, but would be supplemented with the additional information collected by the UK Courts Services following the reporting requirement change
- discontinue the publication of Tables 12.4 and 12.5. We would continue to publish Tables 12.2 and 12.3 in the same format, but with reduced coverage as above
5. Your feedback
We would welcome feedback from users on which of our two different proposals they would prefer. Please email your feedback to personaltax.statistics@hmrc.gov.uk. Thank you in advance.
We will use your feedback to decide which of the two proposals we should take forward in future releases. We will notify users about how these statistics will change in a future release.