Advisers are set to see continued rising demand for support from clients in the face of higher inheritance tax (IHT) bills, with IHT receipts set to double in the next five years, says Chesnara Life UK’s Mark Lambert.
The latest HMRC figures show IHT receipts reached £7.7bn between April 2025 and February 2026, £100m higher than the same period last year. In the 2025 Autumn Budget, the government predicted receipts could reach £14.5bn by the 2030/31 tax year.
Lambert, head of onshore bond distribution, said there is a growing interest in the tax effective wrappers available to clients with onshore bonds increasingly seen as a key part of the product mix.
“Using an onshore investment bond, particularly as a trust investment, delivers attractive tax deferment and tax management benefits for IHT and estate planning, including other features such as top slicing relief and 5% tax deferred withdrawals,” he said. “In addition, lifetime transfers by way of assignment without consideration are not taxable events.”
The decision at Budget to maintain the freeze on thresholds, with the nil-rate band remaining at £325,000 since 2009 and rising property values and asset growth pushing ever more estates above the tax-free limit, means more estates are being dragged into the IHT net, which could be exacerbated by proposals to bring unused pension pots within IHT from April next year.
Jon Sullivan, inheritance tax expert at Wesleyan Financial Services, said: “Plenty of people still assume IHT won’t apply to them. But it’s worth double checking.”
Ian Dyall, head of estate Planning at Evelyn Partners, pointed out IHT is no longer a marginal concern affecting only the very wealthiest.
“Families with modest and commonplace levels of wealth can now benefit from some careful estate planning and IHT-mitigations strategies,” he said.
Simon Martin, head of UK technical services at Utmost, said the group is seeing behavioural changes as people look at ways to defer, mitigate or avoid a larger than previously expected tax hit.
“Our recent analysis of Trust Registration Service (TRS) data showed that trust use continued to rise, with 121,000 new trusts registered in 2024/5, taking the total number to 835,000, as people use them as a core planning tool to organise succession and manage long-term family wealth.
“Families are also increasingly turning to ‘gifting with control’ strategies to reduce the taxable value of their estate.”
