Inheritance tax (IHT) was historically only paid by the wealthiest members of the British population and even then, it is said, that those were the ones that hadn’t taken good tax advice!

Seen as a ‘voluntary tax’, IHT levies a 40% charge on everything we have at our death above the nil rate band, which is currently £325,000 and is frozen at this level until the end of the 2025/26 tax year. The issue is that the price of the family home is not frozen. In fact, quite the opposite.

Although there has been a lot of outrage recently about the frozen nil rate band, which was announced in the budget of 2021, in reality, the nil rate band has been frozen since the 2009/10 tax year. That’s nearly 12 years of cold stagnation.