Almost one million homes in England, Scotland and Wales will benefit from if the inheritance tax (IHT) threshold in raised, property website Zoopla says.
Chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce in the Summer Budget speech today an increase in the IHT threshold to £500,000 from £325,000 per person.
This means that married couples can pass on assets worth up to £1 million without paying any levy at all. This would raise the total number of homes completely exempt from IHT from 26.33 million to 27.28 million, an increase of 953,498, Zoopla has estimated.
Beneficiaries in London stand to gain the most from the new ruling, with 428,011 extra properties escaping IHT. Almost a quarter of a million more homes in the South East would also be exempt from the levy.
Lawrence Hall of Zoopla comments: “Due to rising house prices, the number of families paying death duties would have soared in coming years, so the decision to increase the threshold is a sensible solution to a problem that was bubbling under the surface. As with the Stamp Duty changes, these proposals are a much-needed modernisation of thresholds that would have risked becoming obsolete as property values head northwards. Most of us work hard our entire lives so that we can bequeath assets to our children and grandchildren and the increased threshold means fewer families will be stung by the taxman after relatives pass away.”
Number of newly exempt homes by region
| Region | Number of newly exempt homes (from £650k to £1m) |
| London | 428,011 |
| South East England | 237,346 |
| East of England | 100,776 |
| South West England | 63,526 |
| Scotland | 28,571 |
| North West England | 24,506 |
| West Midlands | 25,930 |
| East Midlands | 15,081 |
| North East England | 13,168 |
| Yorkshire & Humber | 9,983 |
| Wales | 6,600 |
| Total | 953,498 |
