What is Inheritance Tax?

Inheritance Tax is a death duty, if you dIE and your estate, IE savings, property, etc come to more than say £300,000 then the people who receive your estate, ie partners, kids, pay tax on anything above that at 40% tax. However if you are married and this has not been explained very well, say the husband dies all spouses receive the whole estate tax fee anyway. You can find more information on the Goverments Inland Revenue websites. Hope This helps

It is downright theft!!! taxing already taxed money...it should be totally abolished in my opinion, why the hell should we work all our lives and then give the goverment another fat slice. It was originally intended for the very wealthy, but now a lot of people in this country who work and own their own house are falling into the outdated catagory. In my opinion it doesnt matter how wealthy you become in your life, it has been worked for by family for family and should stay in the family...1000 %of it.

Inheritance Tax is the tax paid on property NOW over £600,000when a person dies. This includes the house and all other personal effects. Before it was only £285,000 which is the cost of an avergage house these days so anything over that amount was liable to a 40% Inheritance tax. House prices have shot up in recent years so that meant that practically everyone was paying the ineritance tax which was not fair to the beneifiaries of the estate. Hope this is clear.

One thing to bear in mind is that there is no actual increase in the threshold. Every person previously got a nil band of £300k, all Mr Darling has done is allow married couples (including civil partnerships) to add theirs together to give a joint nil band of £600k. When one person in a married couple dies, their half of the house/estate automatically passes to the surviving spouse with no IHT considerations whatever the value of the estate - unless they have instructed otherwise, say in their will. Under the previous system, the individual's £300k nil band is not used here, and may effectively be wasted. When the second person dies the estate passes on and IHT is payable on the value over £300k. The new system means that any nil rate band not used by the first individual can be used by the surviving spouse on their death. So this nil band isn't being doubled, just that the unused nil band can be transfered. But given that the first individual could easily have arranged for their half of the house to be given to someone other than their spouse on their death (say directly to their children or put into a trust for their children etc), then there's not a huge amount of difference in these new announcements. Other than it just makes things easier for married couples, co-habiting couples can still use planning to achieve exactly the same result.

Perhaps the hardest aspect of Inheritance Tax is that you have to pay the tax before you can inherit the Capital. So, if someone is assessed to pay £100,000 on a property, savings, household contents, Granny's jewellery, her caravan, etc. they have to give the Government that money before they can get the money to be able to pay it! Where would the ordinary guy in the street find the Tax money? Simple - he goes up to his ears in debt by taking out loans which drag on and on because it can take a year or more to sort out just a simple property inheritance.

If you inherit any property or money above that value, the government puts a tax on it. I call it stealing!

K2 has answered this. I think the figure quoted only applies to rich peoples homes. I don't usually answer political questions. It just means if I die and leave my house to our three sons they will have to pay inheritance tax, that is tax off the price of the value of the house. I am not in the rich bracket so it will be less than quoted yesterday. If anyone finds this answer wrong please let me know. As I said I don't do politics.

idk