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UK inheritance tax receipts reached £8.5bn in the 2025/26 financial year — a record, and up roughly ~58% in seven years. HMRC's liabilities statistics put the incidence at 4.72% of deaths in 2023/24 — note that HMRC counts deaths, not estates — and the share rises every year that the £325K nil-rate band stays frozen against rising asset values. Two freeze dates get run together: the nil-rate band is held to 5 April 2031, the residence nil-rate band and its £2m taper threshold only to 5 April 2030.
HMRC publishes inheritance tax receipts monthly, and the annual out-turns in Table 2 of the statistics table that goes with the bulletin. The climb is not unbroken: receipts dipped in 2019/20 and 2020/21, both below the 2018/19 figure, before rising in every year since.
| Tax year | IHT receipts (£bn) | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2018/19 | £5.4bn | Final confirmed |
| 2019/20 | £5.1bn | Final confirmed |
| 2020/21 | £5.3bn | Final confirmed |
| 2021/22 | £6.1bn | Final confirmed |
| 2022/23 | £7.1bn | Final confirmed |
| 2023/24 | £7.5bn | Final confirmed |
| 2024/25 | £8.2bn | Final confirmed |
| 2025/26 | £8.5bn | Final confirmed |
The total UK Treasury take from inheritance tax has grown by roughly ~58% across those seven years — from £5,359m to £8,467m on HMRC's own table — without any change to the headline 40% rate or the £325K nil-rate band.
The headline growth isn't down to a tax rise — the 40% rate and £325K threshold have been unchanged for years. What's shifted is which estates fall above the line. Five drivers explain almost all the growth:
Use our free IHT calculator to estimate where a specific estate sits against the £325K + £175K combined threshold.
Rising receipts have second-order effects on executor work that most coverage ignores:
For the practical knock-on — how long IHT400 review actually takes when more estates are queuing — see our HMRC processing times for deceased estates guide.
From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds will become IHT-chargeable on death. This was confirmed in the 2024 Autumn Budget after a long period where pension wealth sat outside the estate for IHT purposes.
Practical implications:
We track the upcoming rule change and full IHT 2026/27 detail in our inheritance tax complete guide.
UK IHT receipts reached £8.5bn in the 2025/26 financial year (April 2025 to March 2026), up from £5.4bn in 2018/19. The total has grown roughly ~58% over seven years — entirely through fiscal drag, not policy changes.
HMRC measures it as a share of deaths rather than estates: 4.72% of deaths in 2023/24 resulted in an inheritance tax charge — 30,400 out of 644,000 UK deaths. That is the highest share since 2006/07, and it has been under one in twenty since 2007/08. The share creeps up each year as more estates exceed the frozen £325K nil-rate band, and is expected to rise further when pension pots become IHT-chargeable in April 2027.
Fiscal drag. The nil-rate band has been frozen at £325K since 2009 and is held to 5 April 2031; the residence nil-rate band and its £2m taper threshold run only to 5 April 2030 — two different dates. Property and other asset values keep rising, so more estates cross the threshold each year, increasing total receipts even though the share paying is still small.
HMRC's policy paper on unused pension funds carries an OBR-certified Exchequer impact for the April 2027 change: +£710m in 2027/28, +£1,485m in 2028/29, +£1,600m in 2029/30 and +£1,665m in 2030/31. Separately, with the £325K nil-rate band frozen to 5 April 2031, fiscal drag continues regardless.
HMRC publishes "HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK" on GOV.UK on the 15th working day of each month; the annual out-turns are in Table 2 of the accompanying statistics table. The number of estates paying, and the share of deaths, come from a different publication — HMRC's Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics. Farra tracks the headline number on our UK Bereavement Statistics hub.