IHT update

HAVING LAST EXAMINED the subject in 1999 the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts has recently published its latest report into inheritance tax. This and the oral evidence taken by the committee questioning Mr Paul Gray (Deputy Chairman of the Inland Revenue) and others gave the committee the opportunity to update itself on progress since that last report and to comment on the current situation.

The right amount the right time

The report noted that HMRC received 67 500 inheritance tax returns in 2003-04 and had enquired into 3 600 cases securing an additional tax yield of £126 million. The total tax collected from the 30 000 estates that were actually liable in the year was £2.5 billion. The committee was interested in the potential tax lost by non-compliance and was concerned that unlike the USA HMRC had not measured the 'tax...