Inheritance tax receipts climbed to £7.1bn for the period running from last April to January 2026, according to data from HMRC.
This represents a rise of £100m on the same spell of time in the previous tax year, and continues a persistent trend.
More and more estates are being snared by the frozen thresholds as time goes on, with no sign the situation is going to change.
From April 2027, unspent pension pots will be pulled into scope and boost the figures further.
Ian Dyall, head of estate planning at Evelyn Partners, said: “The recent monthly increases in the overall IHT take have been fairly modest, compared to the trajectory we’ve been used to, which could reflect the levelling off of house prices in the UK over the last few years.
“I suspect underneath the overall figure there will be an upturn of IHT taken from UK regions outside the South East. The South East has traditionally made up the lion’s share of IHT liabilities and that will continue to be the case for a long time, given several decades of wealth creation in the region.
See also: SJP’s Justin Onuekwusi: How to prepare for a correction
‘But property values in and around London have levelled off in recent years, and even fallen in real terms in some areas compared to general inflation, while elsewhere in the country house prices had seen double-digit annual increases,” Dyall continued.
“That could mean many families in the South West, Midlands and North of England are being dragged into the potential IHT net by the increase in their home’s value, probably without realising it.
Mike Winstanley, director of wealth management at Bentley Reid, added: “The latest HMRC figures show IHT receipts continuing their upward trajectory. We have now seen consecutive record-level years for IHT, and the direction of travel is clear.
“In practice, this is being driven by a prolonged freeze in the nil-rate band and residence nil-rate band, combined with sustained growth in property values and investment portfolios over the past decade.
“As a result, more families who would not traditionally have considered themselves exposed to IHT are now firmly within scope.
“For clients, the impact is increasingly material. IHT at 40% is not marginal, it meaningfully alters the intergenerational transfer of wealth. Where an estate sits at £3–5m, the tax liability can comfortably exceed £1m without structured planning in place.”
