Costly procrastination: Why inheritance tax is becoming a wider UK problem

Inheritance tax has long been seen as a problem for the future – something easily postponed and better left to deal with later. Increasingly, that assumption is proving both outdated and costly. A combination of frozen thresholds, rising asset values and policy changes is steadily expanding the number of estates caught by IHT. Around 32,000 estates paid the tax in 2022/23 , but that figure is expected to rise sharply, with an additional 30,000 estates forecast to fall into scope by 2030. For business owners, investors and the UK's growing mass‑affluent population, this shift has real ...