Farra is a death administration assistant for UK families. Get step-by-step guidance for registering a death, applying for probate, notifying banks, and managing bereavement admin. From essential documents to practical checklists, Farra simplifies estate paperwork and funeral-related tasks so you can focus on what matters.
There is no longer a claim form. HMRC withdrew form R27 in October 2014 and replaced it with a process that works from the information it already holds: once HMRC knows about the death and knows who is dealing with the estate, it reviews the tax position for the final part-year itself and writes to the personal representative with the result. Your job is to make sure it has been told, and to check the figures it comes back with.
The tax position for the year of death is one of the most commonly overlooked parts of estate administration. Because PAYE spreads the personal allowance across the year, someone who dies part-way through it has often paid more tax than they owed. What has changed — and what most guidance still gets wrong — is how you deal with it: there is no longer a claim form to send in. HMRC publishes no figure for the average repayment on death, so treat any number you see quoted for it with suspicion.
The UK PAYE system deducts income tax from wages and pension payments on the assumption that a person will earn income throughout the full tax year (6 April to 5 April the following year). Each monthly pay packet deducts one-twelfth of the annual tax due.
The personal allowance (£12,570 for 2026/27) is similarly spread across the year. So each month, the employee or pensioner is entitled to roughly £1,048 of tax-free income.
When someone dies mid-year, the remaining months of the tax year go unused. But the tax that has already been deducted was calculated on the assumption that no further allowances would be available — which is now incorrect. The result is almost always an overpayment of tax for the year.
For example, someone who dies at the end of September having received PAYE income from April to September will have had six months of allowance applied — £6,285 of the £12,570. They are entitled to the full year's allowance regardless. The remaining £6,285 of unused allowance means some or all of the tax deducted in those earlier months may need to be refunded.
Form R27, “Reclaiming tax or paying tax when someone dies”, was HMRC’s dedicated form for this. It has not existed since October 2014. HMRC withdrew it because the form created work on both sides for information HMRC largely already held, and replaced it with an automated review plus one of a small set of letters, depending on the circumstances. Any guide still telling you to download and complete an R27 is out of date, and the old publication page on gov.uk now returns a 404.
What matters now is telling HMRC about the death and about who is dealing with the estate. There are three routes:
Have these ready whichever route you use:
Self Assessment taxpayers are handled separately:
If the deceased was registered for Self Assessment — because they were self-employed, had rental income, or had other untaxed income — HMRC will issue a return covering 6 April to the date of death for the personal representative to complete. GOV.UK is explicit about the deadline: “The return must reach HMRC by the date given in the letter you received with the form.” Where a return is reissued to a personal representative, HMRC’s Self Assessment manual allows three months and seven days from reissue — and an extended filing period does not move the date the tax is due. Do not assume 31 January, and do not ignore the date on the letter.
Once HMRC has been told about the death and knows who is dealing with the estate, it reviews the deceased's tax record for the year of death. HMRC will:
Repayments are normally made by cheque payable to the estate. The cheque should be paid into the estate bank account and accounted for as an estate asset. If the calculation shows tax owed rather than a refund, that is an estate debt and must be paid before the residue is distributed.
Check the calculation rather than assuming it is right. HMRC works from the records it holds, which may not include every source of income, and where the deceased had an unusual tax code — a K code, or an emergency code, or an adjustment collecting an earlier year's underpayment — the figures are worth comparing against the P60, the coding notice and the pension provider's statements.
One of the most common errors in estate administration is distributing the estate to beneficiaries before all income, debts, and tax liabilities have been settled. An income tax refund is an asset of the estate — it belongs to the beneficiaries, not to the executor personally.
If the executor distributes the estate before the HMRC refund arrives:
Best practice is to wait until HMRC has confirmed the tax position for the year of death — and ideally for any earlier tax years where issues may be outstanding — before making a final distribution. A prudent executor retains a sum in the estate account as a tax reserve until HMRC clearance is obtained.
HMRC does not publish a service standard for the tax review that follows a death, and there is no form whose processing time could be quoted. What GOV.UK does say is that it can take at least 30 days for HMRC to contact you after you have used Tell Us Once. Beyond that, any specific number of weeks you see quoted is somebody's estimate rather than a published figure.
If nothing has arrived and you need to chase it, call the bereavement helpline on 0300 322 9620 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; the lines are quieter before 10am). Have the deceased's National Insurance number and the date you notified HMRC to hand. Cases involving several PAYE sources, or a self-assessment return for the year of death, take longer because the review waits on the return.
One number to get right
The HMRC bereavement helpline is 0300 322 9620. It is often confused with 0300 322 9620, which is the general Income Tax helpline — a different queue, staffed by people without the deceased's file in front of them. Use the bereavement number.
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