🏡 Inheritance Tax & Probate Calculator

Estimate Inheritance Tax on an estate: nil-rate and residence bands with the £2m taper, spouse and charity exemptions, business and agricultural relief, failed gifts and probate fees.

Nothing you enter leaves your device — the whole calculation runs in your browser.

Estimated Inheritance Tax
£0
Gifts in the seven years before death
The rules, the 2026 relief cap and the traps

Nil-rate band and residence nil-rate band. The nil-rate band is £325,000 per person, frozen to April 2031, and unused amounts are transferable between spouses and civil partners (claim on form IHT402) — a couple can have £650,000. The residence nil-rate band adds up to £175,000 where a qualifying residence is closely inherited by a direct descendant, also transferable, giving a couple up to £1,000,000 of allowances. It is tapered away by £1 for every £2 by which the estate exceeds £2,000,000, so it is gone by £2.35m (single) or £2.7m (couple with both allowances), and it can never exceed the value of the residence that is closely inherited.

Reliefs from 6 April 2026. Agricultural and business property relief at 100% is capped: the first £2.5 million of qualifying agricultural and business property (per person, transferable between spouses, so up to £5 million for a couple) gets 100% relief, and value above the cap gets 50% relief — an effective rate of up to 20%. Unquoted and AIM shares now qualify at 50% only. The calculator applies the relief to the values you enter, so assess eligibility (two-year ownership, trading status, excepted assets) before relying on it.

Gifts. Gifts made in the seven years before death are cumulated and use the nil-rate band first; tax is charged at 40% on the excess and reduced by taper relief based on the whole years between the gift and death (20% after three years, 40% after four, 60% after five, 80% after six). The £3,000 annual exemption, small gifts, normal expenditure out of income and gifts between spouses are not modelled — deduct them from the figures you enter. Lifetime chargeable transfers (into trusts) are excluded from this calculator.

Charity and the 36% rate. Where at least 10% of the “baseline” (broadly, the estate after liabilities, reliefs and the spouse exemption but before charitable gifts) is left to charity, the rate on the chargeable death estate falls from 40% to 36%. The test is statutory and has its own rules, including grossing-up where the charity takes a share of residue — the calculator applies a simplified version and shows the threshold.

Pensions. Unused pension funds are outside the estate today, but are scheduled to fall within Inheritance Tax for deaths on or after 6 April 2027. The checkbox models that; the rules are not yet fully in force.

Not modelled. Quick succession relief, grossing-up in full, lifetime chargeable transfers and lifetime tax at 20%, excepted estates and the IHT400/IHT205 reporting routes, deeds of variation within two years, the instalment option and interest, trusts, excluded property, foreign assets, and capital gains tax on death.

Paying. Inheritance Tax is due six months after the end of the month of death and is usually paid, or secured, before the grant issues. The probate application fee is £526 where the estate exceeds £5,000, with sealed copies at £2 each ordered with the application (£16 later) and £22 for a second application after a grant. — Estimate only, not tax or legal advice. Rates checked 4 October 2026.