The amount of inheritance tax (IHT) collected by HMRC has reached £7.6bn in the 11 months to February, surpassing the annual record with a month to spare.

HMRC took the previous annual record last year, when IHT receipts totalled £7.5bn across the full 2023/24 financial year.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has predicted that IHT receipts will continue to rise and has forecast that the total tax take will reach £9.7bn a year by 2028/29.

HMRC said that higher receipts since March 2022 are from a combination of volumes of wealth transfers following IHT-liable deaths, recent rises in asset values and the previous Government’s decision to maintain the IHT tax free thresholds until 2027/28.

The latest figures come after the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, froze the IHT threshold in her Budget last October by a further two years to 2030. This applies to the nil-rate band at £325,000 and residence nil-rate band at £175,000, which had previously been frozen by the Conservatives until 2028.

Head of estate planning at Evelyn Partners, Ian Dyall, said: "With one month of the financial year’s tax receipts to go, IHT revenues are on course to exceed last year’s total by nearly 12%, driven by the engine of fiscal drag.

"Property and investment assets continue to grow in money terms so that more modest estates in real terms are exceeding the frozen nil-rate bands, and those nil-rate bands start to look less meaningful for larger estates, protecting an ever-smaller proportion of them against IHT."

Head of UK technical services at Utmost Wealth Solutions, Simon Martin, added: "Ahead of next week’s Spring Statement and despite lobbying in some areas, we are not expecting any further reforms to the IHT regime but there will be updated projections from the OBR. This will be notable given the further widening of the scope of IHT from April 2026, as well as the changes to IHT on pensions in 2027, which mean that the tax is set to continue delivering record sums for the Chancellor throughout the rest of the decade.

"Following the changes announced at the Autumn Budget, we have already seen an uptick increase in clients seeking professional advice around IHT to ensure they understand how the reforms will impact them."

---