Hundred SummersInheritance tax calculator: what would your estate owe?
A quick estimate using the real rules: the £325,000 nil-rate band, the £175,000 residence nil-rate band (with the £2m taper), a late spouse's transferred allowances, the 36% charity rate, and the 2027 change that brings unused pensions into the taxable estate. Your figures never leave your browser.
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Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Estate | £600,000 |
| Of which the home | £350,000 |
| Home left to children or grandchildren | Yes |
| Pensions (in the estate from April 2027) | £0 |
| Late spouse's unused bands | No |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Nil-rate band | £325,000 |
| Residence nil-rate band | £175,000 |
| Taxable estate | £100,000 |
| Inheritance tax | £40,000 |
| Effective rate on the estate | 6.7% |
The next question
Can I give money away tax-free now? →Gifts from surplus income calculator
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guides
- Optimising your plan: every lever, which ones apply to you, and how they fit together →The overview of every way a UK retirement plan can be improved (tax while you work, where your savings go, how you draw it down and what your estate pays) with a decision tree that finds the levers relevant to you, the combinations that pull against each other, and how to test them in Hundred Summers. Each lever links to the guide that goes deeper. Education, not advice.
- The 7-year rule for gifts, and why taper relief disappoints →How Potentially Exempt Transfers really interact with the nil-rate band, why taper relief rarely helps gifts under £325,000, and the exemptions that work immediately, including the underused surplus-income rule.
- Pensions and inheritance tax from April 2027 →The biggest pension rule change in a decade: unused pension pots join the estate for inheritance tax from April 2027; what changes, the double-tax effect after 75, and how it rewrites the 'spend the pension last' doctrine.
- Inheriting money: the order of operations →A lump sum arrives: inheritance, redundancy, a house sale. The unhurried sequence: debt, buffer, wrappers, the tax on what the money earns next, and the £2,880 trick for a non-earning partner.
- What happens to your pension when you die →Nominations and scheme discretion, the age-75 line that decides whether your beneficiaries pay income tax, beneficiary drawdown, what defined benefit schemes pay, and how the April 2027 inheritance tax change rewrites the answer.
How the allowances work
Everyone has a £325,000 nil-rate band (frozen since 2009). Passing your home to children or grandchildren adds the £175,000 residence nil-rate band, tapered away by £1 for every £2 the estate exceeds £2m. A surviving spouse's estate can use up to 100% of the late partner's unused bands: up to £1m of combined allowances. Everything above the allowances is taxed at 40%, or 36% when at least 10% of the net estate goes to charity. From 6 April 2027, unused pension funds count in the taxable estate (Finance Act 2025): this calculator applies that rule.
Lifetime gifts within seven years, trusts, business and agricultural relief, and life policies written in trust all change the answer: the full Hundred Summers plan models each of them, projects your estate and the bill across your lifetime, and shows what mitigation is worth. Free to start, data stored only on your device.