Whose estate
Select at least one estate to plot.
Where the estate goes
Assumptions & sources
- Inheritance tax is UK-wide. Unlike income tax, it is not devolved: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland charge exactly what England does. This is the only tax tool on this site with no region control.
- The 60% band is the residence nil-rate band being taken away. Above an estate of £2,000,000 it is withdrawn at £1 for every £2, so each extra pound of estate is itself taxed at 40% and exposes another 50p to 40%. That is 60%, and it runs —. Above the top of that range the rate drops back to 40% — the only tax on this site where being richer lowers your marginal rate.
- The £2,000,000 test ignores every relief and exemption. It is the estate after debts but before anything else, so a fully-relieved farm or trading company counts against it at full value, and so does a charitable legacy. A £3,000,000 business that pays no inheritance tax itself can still wipe out £350,000 of residence nil-rate band on the house next to it.
- The residence nil-rate band is not automatic. It needs a home that is or was lived in, passing on death to children, grandchildren or their spouses. Left to a sibling, a niece, a friend or most trusts, it is not available at all — which is the difference between the two pairs of lines on the chart.
- April 2026 puts a ceiling on farm and business relief. Until 5 April 2026, qualifying agricultural and business property is 100% relieved with no limit: an estate of any size pays nothing on it. From 6 April 2026 the 100% relief is capped, and value above the cap is relieved at 50% only — an effective rate of 20% rather than nil. The cap was announced at £1,000,000 and raised to £2,500,000 on 23 December 2025. It is transferable between spouses, so a widowed estate has twice it. Set the two years against each other with a farm or business in the estate and the whole of the change is the gap between the lines.
- A charitable legacy can leave the heirs better off. Leave 10% or more of the baseline amount to charity and the rate on the rest falls from 40% to 36%. Because that is a cliff rather than a slope, an estate just below the 10% line can give more away and hand the other beneficiaries more than they would otherwise have had. The tiles below work out where that line sits for the estate entered.
- The baseline amount is not the estate. It is the estate less reliefs and less the ordinary nil-rate band — but not less the residence nil-rate band, which is left out of the test. So the 10% bar is higher than a quick calculation on the taxable figure suggests, and an estate that clears 10% of what it actually pays tax on can still miss the reduced rate.
- What this does not model. A single death, with a will, an estate held outright and no trusts. Not here: gifts made in the seven years before death and the taper relief on them, which reduces the tax on a failed gift rather than its value and only applies where the gift itself exceeded the nil-rate band — the most misunderstood rule in the tax; the residence nil-rate band being capped at what the home is actually worth, assumed here to be at least the full band; downsizing addition; the 50%-relief categories that existed before 2026, such as land or buildings used by a company the deceased controlled; unlisted and AIM shares, which from April 2026 get 50% relief and do not use up the cap; quick succession relief; woodlands, heritage and national-purpose exemptions; the spouse exemption and the £325,000 cap on it for a non-domiciled spouse; trusts and their ten-year charges; and unused pension funds, which come into the charge on 6 April 2027 and so fall outside both years here.
- Rates and bands come from
/assets/uk-tax.js, the shared module behind the other tax tools on this site. The nil-rate band, the residence nil-rate band and the £2,000,000 taper threshold are all frozen to the end of 2030–31, so the two years here differ only in the treatment of agricultural and business property.