Do probate professionals understand the HMRC declarations within IHT forms

Gerard Faulds is a founding Director of Landmark Financial Asset Search. Today he asks the question ‘Do probate professionals understand the HMRC declarations within IHT forms?’

The supporting exploratory notes provided by HMRC to assist in the accurate completion of IHT forms are 84 pages long. How frequently do you refresh yourself as to their contents?

You may regularly complete IHT 205 and 400 forms but do you read and understand some of the statements and declarations which you are agreeing with?

The IHT forms and exploratory notes do not say “based on the papers provided to you, did the deceased have….” The following are specific questions from the IHT 205 and 400 Forms:

“Did the deceased have any provision for retirement other than the state pension?”

What if the deceased paid into a pension scheme for many years but had stopped making payments into the plan and was not already drawing a pension from the scheme?

“Did the deceased pay premiums on life insurance policies...?

What if the deceased paid a single Life premium many years ago? How would you know?

Your recently nominated COLP will play a pivotal role in ensuring that firms and ABS’s throughout England and Wales have appropriate systems and controls in place to enable them to manage business risks.

A Landmark Financial Asset Search enables probate professionals (and their clients) to have greater confidence that lost and forgotten financial assets have been sought as well as known assets and are distributed in accordance with the latest will.

Gerard has a background in Financial Services having been a Senior Executive or Director of a number of the institutions who work with us and who value the service they provide in reuniting assets with their rightful owners. His understanding of the industry has enabled us to develop the FAS search facility to become a critical tool for probate professionals as they manage their probate case risks.