Seema Malhotra – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Seema Malhotra on 2016-02-03.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) primary and (b) secondary policy purposes are of inheritance tax relief for estates left on death.

Mr David Gauke

There are several inheritance tax (IHT) reliefs and these have different policy purposes. Transfers between spouses, including civil partners, are exempt from IHT. Taken together with the IHT nil-rate band, these exemptions are designed to allow most estates to be passed on to beneficiaries without an inheritance tax liability. More targeted exemptions and reliefs have different purposes including encouraging charitable giving, ensuring that businesses and farms do not have to be broken up to pay the liability and ensuring estates of those in the armed services and our emergency services who die in active service are exempt from inheritance tax.