HMRC’s latest figures, published in August, show inheritance tax receipts reached £3.2 billion between April and July 2026, up on the same period last year and driven partly by June, which was the highest single month for IHT receipts on record. It’s the latest data point in a run that has seen receipts climb almost every year for over a decade.
The reason isn’t that more people are becoming wealthy in the way that phrase usually implies. It’s that the thresholds haven’t moved. The nil-rate band has been frozen at £325,000 since 2009 and is now confirmed frozen through to 2030/31, while property prices, pensions and other assets have kept rising around it. That combination, sometimes called fiscal drag, means a growing number of estates are crossing a line that was set nearly two decades ago and never adjusted for inflation or house price growth.
Who this is actually catching
The effect is that inheritance tax, once thought of as a tax on the very wealthy, is increasingly a tax on ordinary homeowners. A couple who bought a house decades ago, built up a modest pension and some savings, and never considered themselves wealthy can now find their estate comfortably over the threshold once the family home is factored in, particularly in and around higher-value property areas. Many of these families haven’t done any inheritance tax planning at all, because they never expected to need it.
The trend is also set to accelerate. From April 2027, most unused pension funds will be brought inside the value of an estate for inheritance tax purposes for the first time, a change several advisers quoted in response to the latest HMRC figures have already flagged as significant. Pensions are often one of the largest assets on a person’s balance sheet by retirement, and their inclusion is expected to pull further families into scope over the following years.
What families should be doing
Frozen thresholds mean this isn’t a problem that fixes itself, and it isn’t limited to a one-off check either. As property values, pensions and savings change over time, an estate that sits comfortably under the threshold today can drift over it within a few years without anyone actively doing anything differently. The sensible response is a proper, up-to-date view of what’s actually in the estate, what it’s likely to be worth by the time it matters, and which reliefs, gifts or trust structures genuinely apply rather than assumed defaults.
That’s the starting point for inheritance tax planning with Beaumont Wealth, where an estate is assessed as a whole property, pensions, savings and investments together, rather than treated as a single number against a fixed threshold. With receipts still climbing and the rules only getting broader, families who assume this doesn’t apply to them are exactly the ones worth double-checking.
ENDS
