Leading think-tank’s paper on abolishing inheritance tax, building on arguments it first made nearly 30 years ago, shows that the economic case for abolishing inheritance tax is even stronger 

A new paper from the Adam Smith Institute revisits the case for scrapping Inheritance Tax (IHT) that it first made in 1995, and finds that the same arguments are just as strong today and, in some cases, are even more so.

The ASI outlines the following economic reasons to abolish IHT:

1. It places an unfair burden on those liable to pay the tax, often when their relatives are in the midst of grieving the death of a loved one. The responsibility to pay the right amount in tax falls entirely on the executor of the deceased’s will, often at great administrative expense. The pages of forms that have to be filled in have quintupled from 23 to 118 since 1995.

2. Family businesses are more likely to go bust, and it discourages individual ownership of shares. This is because shareholders in ‘quoted companies’ - those large enough to be floated on the stock market- are able to sell their shares. But shareholders in much smaller ‘unquoted companies,’ often family-run small businesses, are far less likely to have enough money, so the charge falls onto the company instead. This weakens the company financially and means that it's either more likely to go bust or be taken over.

3. The way the tax is structured encourages individuals to invest their money into less productive areas of the economy, rather than investing in companies and capital. 

4. All of these negative impacts are due to a tax which is making up increasingly less of the total tax take. In 1992/3, it was 1.7%, and in 2022 it was a mere 0.89%. And it’s costing the Exchequer £26.3 billion in exemptions and carve-outs; far more than the tax actually raises. 

The Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi, Member of Parliament of Stratford-upon-Avon and Patron of the Adam Smith Institute said:

“Conservatives have long understood that the continued existence of inheritance tax is fundamentally antithetical to our instincts. It is levied disproportionately on the most entrepreneurial parts of our economy, it complicates our already over-burdensome tax code, and it prevents us from fulfilling the most basic human desire of all; to leave our children better off than we were ourselves. 

This newly updated report by the Adam Smith Institute highlights how the moral and economic arguments in favour of the abolition of inheritance tax that they were making almost 30 years ago are just as compelling today.

The Government has the opportunity in the Spring Budget to demonstrate our Conservative values; that we understand that individuals know best what to do with their own money and that we are on the side of family-run businesses. One of the most effective ways to do so would be to abolish the immoral death tax.”

Maxwell Marlow, Director of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, said:

“The Adam Smith Institute has been outlining the numerous reasons to rid the UK of this distortionary tax for decades. 

With fiscal drag now pulling more and more people into paying, there can be no more appropriate time to properly consider the negative impacts that inheritance tax has, and the benefits of scrapping it.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Emily Fielder, emily@adamsmith.org | 0758 477 8207.

Barry Bracewell-Miles (1931-2021), author of the original paper, authored six papers for the ASI, ranging from inheritance tax, to alcohol duties, to capital gains tax. He was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Society for Individual Freedom, and was the Economic Director of the Confederation of British Industry. 

Maxwell Marlow, who has updated the paper, is the Director of Research at the Adam Smith Institute. 

The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, neoliberal think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.