To test British empathy, mention Inheritance Tax

Despite only five percent of estates liable for any Inheritance Tax, with the first £1 million completely tax free and often with another large tax free chunk with careful planning any mention just of the tax, let alone increasing it for a small subset of those in scope, results in outrage from people who are never, ever going to pay IHT in a month of lifetimes.

For people to howl at the injustice for those about to inherit multi-millions even though they will probably struggle to survive the rest of their own miserable existence is a demonstration of British empathy. Forget children starving, youngsters saddled with renting forever but rail against a tax only applicable to a minority.

'In reality fewer than 0.05% of the population has an estate subject to IHT in any year,' said a financial spokesman today, noting that scrapping IHT would need other taxes being increased. 'To be fair, the government has tried increasing taxes on families and taking benefits off the elderly so it's a possibility,' he said.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash