Inheritance tax - IHT400 form 😳

[FrenchandSaunders]

Bloody hell the detail they want. I don’t believe we even need to pay IHT with the personal allowances etc but HMRC have told us to fill this form in.

Has anyone done it themselves or did you pay a solicitor or similar. We’ve done the probate form ourselves.

The guidance to ‘help’ is 92 pages long!

Just take it question at a time, it’s not actually that bad.

Deep breath and give it a go. Loads of the questions will just be "no, not applicable" unless the deceased had loads of complicated investments.
You just need a valuation for everything, but you'd need that even if someone else was filling in the form.

The most annoying part is that inheritance tax is a tax on money that has already been taxed.

Agree with this. Its not as daunting as it seems once you get started.

Yes, just plod on as a pp said, one question at a time and most will be N/A if you think you're under IHT.
If you give it over to a solicitor you'll have to provide the answers anyway so you may as well do it yourself and save on a solicitor bill.

Yes, have just completed it. There is no tax to pay so it seems ridiculous that there isn’t a simpler form to complete.

The most annoying part is that inheritance tax is a tax on money that has already been taxed.

Given that money circulates, pretty much all tax is.

Tax doesn't follow the money, it is based on the person. Someone receiving the money has not been taxed on it yet. Its about distributing wealth more fairly. You can receive a hell of a lot before tax kicks in, only a tiny percentage of estates are subject to it so it's only applying to the wealthier proportion of society.

If you don't like it, you can leave money to charity.

@SkyBloo if allowances are not applicable eg no direct descendant to inherit the house and never married, then a smaller estate will also need to pay IHT which seems unfair.

Yes, did it myself.
One question at a time is the way!
You would still have to sort out all the stuff and get it valued even if you paid a solicitor to put the numbers in the form.
If it had lots of complicated legal stuff (farms, trusts, complex investments, property abroad) would have got a lawyer.
But if it's a house, the stuff in it, some savings, normal stuff, it's really simple.
Also, HMRC were really helpful when I got a bit stuck (8 years ago).

TL;DR you still have to do all the difficult stuff of sorting, valuing etc. You can choose to pay someone else to fill in the form, but you'll have to give them the info.

If the estate isn't big enough to attract IHT there's much of the form you can just zip through.

How far are you from the deadline
Every year I have at least 1 client who tries to do it themselves only to come in a week before the deadline with 2 carrier bags full of papers and ask me to di it
I can but need 2 members of staff working on it constantly for a week ,and that costs a lot

Tax hasn't been paid on it by the beneficiaries though - they're the ones being taxed really. Plus many estates reach the IHT threshold due to property price increases which haven't been taxed.

my dm’s estate is over £750k, no tax to pay due to allowances, but still have to complete the additional schedules so it’s not a quick process.

I paid a solicitor to do it all for me. Took two weeks for them to do the forms and get me to sign them, then two weeks for HMRC to send the code they need now to apply for probate and then it was another 8 weeks for probate to be granted. It was worth the money as I'm terrible with forms and it wasn't something I wanted to be stressed about while grieving.

@SkyBlooif allowances are not applicable eg no direct descendant to inherit the house and never married, then a smaller estate will also need to pay IHT which seems unfair

And yet, still only a tiny percentage of estates are hit. Its still a huge amount tax free.

Thanks all you’ve encouraged me to block an afternoon off this week and get stuck into it. Good point about still having to find all the info even if someone else did it.

As pp's my brother and I did DM's. It was pretty easy, the only value we got professionally was the house, the rest was cash. Her valuables had already been passed on. Other possessions were valueless as not passed on/ house cleared.

So is VAT, tax of interest on savings, cgt, etc etc

Had to do it about 500 years ago. Its a ballache but its not actually that hard, just time consuming. The real pain in the arse is the time spent digging for information, which you'd need to be doing even if you had a solicitor.