“The inexorable march of IHT continues at pace”

After the publication of HMRC tax receipts for July this morning, Lisa Caplan, director of OneStep Financial Planning at wealth manager Charles Stanley comments:

 
“This morning’s data shows the inexorable march of IHT continues at pace as frozen allowances bring more families into the net. The new government has a large deficit to fill and whilst it has said there will be no increases in direct taxes, there is plenty of scope to play with peripheral taxes like IHT. Whilst it brings in less than 1% of total government revenues, there are plenty of exemptions and exceptions that could be revisited. Business relief, pensions relief, and agricultural land relief have been touted as possibly open to review. Closing these is estimated to increase IHT receivables by a fifth: enough to cover the new national wealth fund.

“It will be interesting to see what Rachel Reeves unveils in her first Budget on 27^th October, but expect some ‘incredibly tough choices’ to come.”