'Inheritance tax is immoral' Calls to cut death levy as taxman rakes in £3.7bn in one year
PRESSURE for a cut in Inheritance Tax intensified last night after it emerged that the taxman raked in a colossal £3.7billion from the hated levy last year.
Soaring house prices meant annual Government receipts from the death duty increased by £400million from 2013.
The rise shows that tens of thousands of middle income families are being dragged into paying a levy once intended for the wealthy.
The shock figures from the Office for National Statistics are a vindication of the Daily Express’s hugely popular crusade to scrap the tax.
Yesterday calls for the IHT threshold to be lifted for the first time since 2009 gained momentum.
Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to reveal a Tory manifesto pledge to cut the tax and Chancellor George Osborne has already hinted as much, saying IHT should be paid only “by the rich”.
By refusing to move the thresholds in line with property prices, successive Chancellors have sneakily used this Death Tax as an increasingly lucrative way of topping up the Treasury coffers.
In 2010, Mr Cameron promised to raise the threshold to £1million, but the plan was quashed by the Lib Dems after the Coalition was formed.
Instead a small rise from £325,000 to £329,000 will be introduced from April. Above this level the tax is charged at 40 per cent of the Estate’s value.
The average home now costs £271,000 across the UK – and £501,000 in London.
Andy Silvester, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:
“By refusing to move the thresholds in line with property prices, successive Chancellors have sneakily used this Death Tax as an increasingly lucrative way of topping up the Treasury coffers. The tax is immoral and has to go.”
