Most people will not see their estates subject to inheritance tax. Still, most people oppose the principle of the tax altogether. New polling from Ipsos confirms, once again, how loathed the death tax is: 23 per cent of people perceive the tax as ‘fair’ (tied for the lowest ranking, alongside stamp duty). Meanwhile 43 per cent of people see the tax as ‘unfair’ (the highest ranking, even more hated than income tax paid by the lowest earners).
It won’t go down well, then, that almost 50,000 additional households are expected to be dragged in to paying inheritance tax, nearly four times the expected increase according to HMRC forecasts seen by the Daily Telegraph. This increase is expected to take the number of households affected by the tax to more than 280,000 by the end of 2027-28.
Freezing these thresholds has been the government’s preferred method for getting more taxpayer income into the Treasury
Of course there is the issue of stated versus revealed preference when it comes to this tax.
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