Inheritance tax (IHT) receipts reached £7bn in the period between April last year and January, a £700m year-on-year increase, HMRC has revealed.

Receipts collected by the Government’s tax collection authority totalled £639m in January 2025, which is a 15% increase year-on-year.

The latest results continue to put the current financial year on course to be the fourth consecutive year of record IHT collections for the Treasury.

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, having hit a record £7.5bn in 2023/24.

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 retirement analysis, Helen Morrissey, said: "The IHT creep crawls ever higher, hitting £7bn so far this tax year. This puts it well on track to surpass the £7.5bn record that it hit a year earlier. With Government plans to include pensions in the net for IHT from 2027 and thresholds remaining frozen, the tax take is only going to get higher.

"However, there are things you can do to try and reduce an inheritance tax bill, and we expect people will start to take action sooner rather than later. Gifts of any size fall out of your estate after seven years so we can expect to see people start to gift assets to loved ones now so they can start the countdown ticking. We will also likely see people start to use the various gifting allowances available – such as the £3,000 annual exemption – to reduce the size of their estate.

"Gifting out of excess income will also prove popular. However, its really important that detailed records are kept as gifts need to be proved to be made regularly and out of your surplus income to meet the rules. You also should not reduce your own standard of living to maintain these gifts – this is a really important point as you don’t want to be in a position of needing to ask for gifted money back because you can no longer afford to give it."

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