IHT205 or IHT400? Which Inheritance Tax Form You Actually Need

For a death on or after 1 January 2022, the honest answer for most people is neither. IHT205 no longer applies to those deaths, and most estates are excepted estates, which send no separate Inheritance Tax form at all — the values go straight onto the probate application. Only an estate where HM Revenue and Customs needs full details sends an IHT400. If the person died on or before 31 December 2021, IHT205 is still the right form.

That is an unusual answer to a question phrased as a choice between two forms, and it is the reason the question is asked so often: a lot of published guidance still describes a route that closed at the end of 2021.

This guide covers England and Wales. All figures are as published by GOV.UK and HMRC on 18 September 2026. The rules that apply are the ones in force at the date of death, not today.

The date of death decides everything below, so it is worth having it in front of you. If you want to see which of the four possible situations an estate is in, and what each one involves, that is set out here.

The short answer, by date of death

Date of death	What you send to HMRC
On or after 1 January 2022, estate is excepted	Nothing. Values are certified on the probate application itself
On or after 1 January 2022, full details needed	IHT400 plus the schedules that apply
6 April 2011 to 31 December 2021, no tax expected	IHT205 by post
Any date, tax is payable	IHT400 plus schedules

GOV.UK's own IHT205 page states the boundary plainly: you need that form if the person died on or after 6 April 2011 and on or before 31 December 2021 and the estate is unlikely to pay Inheritance Tax. And immediately after: "If the person died on or after 1 January 2022, you'll need to check if you need to send full details of the estate."

That sentence is the whole change. The question stopped being "which of the two short forms?" and became "do I need to send full details at all?".

Why IHT205 stopped applying

Until the end of 2021, an estate that owed no Inheritance Tax still had to tell HMRC so, on IHT205. That was a return filed by hundreds of thousands of families a year to report, in effect, that there was nothing to report.

From 1 January 2022 the excepted-estate rules were widened and the separate return for those estates was removed. An excepted estate now reports its values on the probate application — PA1P where there is a will, PA1A where there is not — and HMRC receives what it needs that way.

The practical effect for a bereaved executor is one fewer form and one fewer wait. The practical effect for anyone searching the internet is confusion, because a decade of guidance describing the IHT205 route is still online and still ranks.

The online service has gone too. GOV.UK records that the online route for reporting an excepted estate on IHT205 has closed. Where a death falls in the 2011-to-2021 window, the print and post form is what remains.

What replaced it: the excepted-estate check

Nothing replaced IHT205 with another form. The step was removed and a test was put in its place. For a death on or after 1 January 2022 you now work through one question — does HMRC need full details of this estate? — and the answer routes you.

If the answer is no, the estate is an excepted estate, and you go straight to the probate application. If the answer is yes, you complete an IHT400 first, send it to HMRC, and only then apply for probate.

GOV.UK puts it as three conditions, all of which must be true for full details not to be needed:

• the estate counts as an excepted estate
• there is no Inheritance Tax to pay
• none of the reasons for sending full details applies, even though no tax is due

That third condition is the one people miss, and it is the subject of the next section.

When full details are needed even though no tax is due

This is the part that catches people out, and it is worth reading even if you are confident the estate is well under the threshold. Owing no tax and needing no IHT400 are different things. GOV.UK lists the situations where full details must be sent regardless. The person who died:

• gave away over £250,000 in the seven years before they died
• gave gifts and then continued to benefit from them in those seven years
• left an estate worth more than £3 million
• was "deemed domiciled" in the UK
• had foreign assets worth more than £100,000
• was living permanently outside the UK when they died but had previously lived here
• had a life insurance policy that paid out to someone other than their spouse or civil partner and also had an annuity
• increased the value of a lump sum from a personal pension to be paid after their death, while terminally ill or in poor health
• agreed that property given away during their lifetime would form part of their estate rather than pay a pre-owned asset charge

Trusts have their own list. Full details are needed if the person gave gifts that were put into trust, held assets worth over £250,000 in trust, or held more than one trust. They are also needed where assets in trust passed to a surviving spouse, civil partner or charity and the trust was worth £1,000,000 or more, or £250,000 or more after deducting what passed to the spouse, civil partner or charity.

Read that list against the actual estate rather than against an impression of it. A parent who helped two children with house deposits several years ago can cross the £250,000 gifts line without anyone thinking of the estate as large or complicated.

This is the point where a general answer runs out, because the answer now depends on figures rather than on categories. Which of the four situations this estate is in works through the same test, with the rule and the source behind each answer.

What counts as an excepted estate

An estate is usually excepted if any one of these is true, per GOV.UK:

• its value is below the current Inheritance Tax threshold
• it is worth £650,000 or less and unused threshold is being transferred from a spouse or civil partner who died first
• the person left everything to a spouse or civil partner living in the UK, or to a qualifying charity, and the estate is worth less than £3 million
• the person was living permanently outside the UK when they died and their UK assets are worth £150,000 or less

GOV.UK adds, plainly: "Most estates are excepted estates." That is the single most useful sentence in this whole area and it is rarely the impression people arrive with.

The threshold itself is £325,000, and it can be higher — up to £500,000 — where a home passes to children or grandchildren. Which threshold applies, and whether a deceased spouse's unused portion can be added to it, is exactly the kind of question where the general rule and your situation diverge.

If the person died on or before 31 December 2021

The old rules still apply to them. The rules are fixed at the date of death, not at the date you do the paperwork, so an estate being administered today for a death in 2021 follows the 2021 position.

For those deaths, IHT205 remains the correct form where no tax is expected, and it must go in by post. The relevant excepted-estate limits are the older, tighter ones: the exempt-estate gross limit was £1,000,000 rather than the current £3,000,000, for instance.

This matters more often than you would think. Estates are frequently administered a year or more after a death, and a delayed application is precisely the case where somebody reaches for current guidance and applies the wrong year's rules.

What an IHT400 actually involves

If full details are needed, IHT400 is the form. It is long, and it comes with schedules — separate pages for gifts, for jointly owned assets, for the residence nil-rate band, for foreign assets, and more, each one added only if it applies.

What GOV.UK asks of you when you submit it:

• answer all relevant questions
• complete and send any relevant additional pages, the schedules
• send only a copy of the will and of any codicils, never the originals

On valuations, GOV.UK's guidance is proportionate rather than perfectionist: get property or land valued by an estate agent or chartered surveyor, get a professional valuation for anything worth over £1,500, and estimate cheaper items such as ordinary household goods. For cars, jewellery and paintings, work out what you would have got if you had sold them.

After submission HMRC works out the tax and any interest, and writes to you with the calculation. Occasionally they carry out a compliance check, which can involve the Valuation Office or the Shares and Assets Valuation team looking at the figures you gave.

The deadlines, and which one bites first

Two deadlines run at once and they are commonly confused.

Reporting: twelve months. If the estate owes Inheritance Tax you must report its value within one year using IHT400, and you cannot apply for probate until you have done so. Missing that deadline without a reasonable excuse can attract a financial penalty.

Paying: the end of the sixth month after the death. After that HMRC charges interest. Note that this is earlier than the reporting deadline, which produces the awkward situation the whole area is known for: tax is generally payable before the grant is issued, and the grant is what releases the money to pay it.

For an excepted estate neither deadline applies, because there is nothing to report separately and nothing to pay. That is a large part of why the excepted-estate question is worth settling early.

The mistakes this change causes

Downloading IHT205 for a 2023 death. The form is still published, because it is still needed for older deaths, and a search engine cannot tell which year you mean. Check the date range on the form's own page before you start filling it in.

Assuming no tax means no form. The list above is the counter-example. Gifts and foreign assets are the two that most often turn a straightforward-looking estate into an IHT400 one.

Applying for probate before HMRC has been told. Where full details are needed, the IHT400 goes first. Applying the other way round means a rejected or stalled application.

Using this year's thresholds for an earlier death. The rules are fixed at the date of death. This is the single most common cause of a correct-looking form with the wrong figures on it.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need IHT205 or IHT400?

For a death on or after 1 January 2022, usually neither. IHT205 was withdrawn for those deaths and most estates are excepted estates, which send no separate Inheritance Tax form: the values are certified on the probate application itself. Only an estate where HMRC needs full details sends an IHT400.

Has IHT205 been abolished?

Not abolished so much as ended for new deaths. GOV.UK still publishes IHT205 and it remains the correct form where the person died on or after 6 April 2011 and on or before 31 December 2021. For deaths from 1 January 2022 onwards there is no IHT205 route at all, and the online service for it has closed.

What replaced IHT205?

Nothing replaced it with another form. The reporting itself was removed. For deaths from 1 January 2022, an estate that qualifies as an excepted estate reports its values directly on the probate application, PA1P or PA1A, or in the online probate service. There is no separate return to send to HMRC first.

Do I need an IHT400 if there is no tax to pay?

Sometimes, yes. Several situations require full details even when nothing is payable, including gifts of over £250,000 in the seven years before death, gifts the person carried on benefiting from, foreign assets over £100,000, deemed domicile, certain trusts, and estates worth more than £3 million.

What counts as an excepted estate?

Usually an estate below the Inheritance Tax threshold; or worth £650,000 or less where an unused threshold is transferred from a spouse or civil partner who died first; or one left entirely to a spouse, civil partner or qualifying charity and worth under £3 million; or a foreign domiciliary with UK assets of £150,000 or less.

What is the deadline for IHT400?

Twelve months from the date of death, and it must go in before you apply for probate. Any tax due has its own earlier deadline: the end of the sixth month after the death, after which HMRC charges interest. Missing the reporting deadline without a reasonable excuse can attract a financial penalty.

Can I still use the online IHT205 service?

No. The online service for reporting an excepted estate on IHT205 has closed. Where the person died on or after 6 April 2011 and on or before 31 December 2021, the print and post form is the remaining route. For deaths from 1 January 2022 there is no IHT205 to complete in any format.

Why do so many guides still mention IHT205?

Because the change is recent in the life of a form that had been standard for a decade, and a great deal of published guidance was written before it. Search results, printed handbooks and older solicitor pages all still describe the IHT205 route as though it were current, which is why the question keeps being asked.

You now have the whole test, in the same words HMRC uses, and for most people it resolves to "no tax form at all". Applying it to a real estate is the next job, and then completing whichever forms follow — the probate application on its own, or an IHT400 and its schedules as well. Here is what this estate needs, and what help completing your own forms would cost.

Sources

Checked 18 September 2026:

• GOV.UK, Inheritance Tax: return of estate information (IHT205) — the 6 April 2011 to 31 December 2021 date range, the redirection of later deaths to the full-details check, and the closure of the online service
• GOV.UK, Check if you need to send full details of the estate — the full-details triggers, the trust limits, and what counts as an excepted estate
• GOV.UK, If Inheritance Tax is due or full details are needed — IHT400, the twelve-month deadline, valuations and compliance checks
• GOV.UK, How Inheritance Tax works — the nil rate band and the raised threshold where a home passes to descendants
• GOV.UK, Pay your Inheritance Tax bill — the six-month payment deadline
• HMRC, IHTM06011 — what is an excepted estate — the categories of excepted estate
• HMRC, IHTM06013 — exempt excepted estates — the gross limits, before and after 1 January 2022

This guide explains the rules in general. It is not advice about a particular estate, and the excepted-estate tests turn on details that are easy to get wrong. Where an estate is near a limit, or involves trusts, gifts or business assets, take professional advice.

Related guides

• What is an excepted estate? (And do you need an IHT400?)
• How to value an estate for probate
• PA1P or PA1A: which probate form do you need?
• How to apply for probate without a solicitor
• How long does probate take?