Inheritance Tax Calculator

Calculate whether you have to pay inheritance tax bill or if your estate is small enough to escape it. Your assets and debts are added up so that you're worth a final sum. How final!

The top line is if you have less than £325,000 you don’t have to pay inheritance tax, and over that there may be a 40% tax rate to pay.

(More explanatory information available below the calculator)

Assets

Value of your own home

Do you have any other property, like a second home, holiday home, business property or land?

Do you own any cars/caravans or vehicles?

£ of household contents / personal effects

Value of antiques, jewellery, art and / or collectables

What’s the total of your bank and / or building society accounts

Value of your Investments (including stocks and shares)

Life insurance policies (that are not held in a trust)

Pensions lump sum (that are not held in a trust)

Other Assets

Total Assets

What do you owe?

Outstanding mortgage

Other loans

Outstanding debts (overdraft, credit cards or hire purchase)

Any other debts not covered above

Total Liabilities

Total Net Estate

Are you married/or civil partnered and intend your partner to inherit your assets?

If you're married or civil partnered will you leave your house to a younger generation (kids, grandkids, stepkids)

Are you unmarried/civil partnered and intend to leave your home to a younger generation (kids, grandkids, stepkids)

Potential Inheritance Tax To Pay

Notes: This is a very topline guide and is not and should not be taken for tax advice.

If you leave 10% if your estate to charity you can reduce your tax burden from 40% to 36%.

If you own business property or farmland, you should get specialist advice.

Inheritance tax is set at 40% on everything you own above something called a nil-rate band threshold (£325,000) and main residence nil rate (£175,000). Why they have to give these such terrible names is anyone’s guess.

Nil-rate band threshold:

Currently £325,000. If you are single and worth more than that, you might face an inheritance tax bill of 40% of everything above this. You can potentially increase your personal threshold, see below. This allowance is personal to you and doesn’t apply to what you’re doing with your property.

The main residence nil-rate band

This is an extra allowance of £175,000 (currently) which can be used if you’re passing your home to direct descendants - children, stepchildren etc. It will rise with inflation and applies to property.

So, if you were passing property down to kids and are single you could combine your nil rate of £325,000 and your main residence nil rate of £175,000 which would be £500,000 to the kids without your estate paying any inheritance tax.

The transferable nil rate band

It’s slightly different again if you’re married or civil partnered. You can pass the £325,000 nil-rate band to each other. On the death of the first partner, if the deceased leaves everything to the surviving partner, it potentially doubles the survivor’s £325,000 nil-rate band to £650,000. This means the surviving partner can leave assets of £650,000 on their death without any inheritance tax.