According to https://obr.uk/forecasts...-spend/inheritance-tax/

So the state is hardly "relying" on grave robbing. Sucks to be one of the minority being robbed of course (even if it falls into the "nice problem to have" class).

"IHT is a voluntary tax - it's easily avoided with a little planning."

That old canard - so often trotted out - makes me bristle. Yes, there are some enormous estates held in Trust for generations which are not bothered by IHT and there are modest estates that can bring themselves within allowable limits but for those of us in between, it can only be mitigated to some extent but rarely, if ever, avoided. Setting up Trusts now is a bit of a nightmare, doesn't avoid IHT altogether as it can be charged both at inception and on subsequent 10-year valuations for amounts over the nil-rate band, and are taxed unattractively on income and distributions; it is almost impossible to shelter the family home if you intend to go on living in it; the widely-misunderstood '7-year rule' only affects gifts above the £325k per person nil-rate band and the Main Residence Relief drops away for estates of £2m+ (which, as someone pointed out above, equates to a modest London townhouse).

When it comes to mitigation, the 2 key things you need to know are the date of your death and what it will cost you to live if you need care. In other words, the suggestion is that you give away all your 'surplus' wealth without having any idea of how much you might need.

Yes, this is a '1st World' problem and can invite a 'you should be so lucky' response, but please, please stop telling me it's "voluntary".

Seems to me the £175K "Residence nil-rate band" is a big part of the problem. Having one particular asset class which enjoys special status is bound to create all sorts of odd consequences. I get the sentimentality about "the family home" it was supposed to pander to - as if we all lived like landed gentry with stately mansions to preserve on down the generations - but it'd make far more sense to just fold it into a £500K total and let people downsize without compromising their IHT position too much (even so, there'd be the issue the capital released would potentially attract more CGT than a principal residence over the remaining years... but sensible deployment into buy-and-hold investments by the elderly might defer paying any until capital uplift on death makes it an IHT problem instead, the same as it would have been with the original property assuming similar growth rates).

Get married - simple solution . Find a dolly bird 40 yrs your junior and deprive the tax man of his £££££ s ....:)

Marriage is an extreme penance for the sake of avoiding tax! If you have no dependents you could leave it all to charity - that's my plan, if I have anything left.

The problem with including the family home in the estate is that differences in property values in different parts of the country lead to a disparity in outcomes. I would have been heartbroken if I had had to sell my mother's (and my former) home to pay IHT. It isn't just large estates that people want to keep in the family.

Some might think I shouldn't care what happens to my assets after my demise, but there is something wrong with taking part of someone's money and property on death - it's confiscation, not taxation. It's as if property rights have an expiration date, and as far as the state is concerned, we never really own anything, even if we have earned it and paid taxes on it. And I get that some people don't have much to leave, but that doesn't make it right to take from those who do.

Of course there's no chance of IHT being abolished for the foreseeable future, quite the reverse.