Finance Bill - Inheritance Tax
Brooks Newmark raises his concerns about too much form filling.
Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): The thrust of the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) was the form-filling culture-something that the Government pledged to change and reduce. Why will people be required to fill in forms for estates with a net worth of £5,000, which is a huge difference from the inheritance tax threshold of £275,000? Those forms will also require more and more bureaucrats to assess them.
Dawn Primarolo: I hope that when I explain how the process works now, he will realise that that question is based on a basic misunderstanding of what is required under the inheritance tax system. I am sure that he would accept that it is not unreasonable for any Government to require people to go through certain steps to ensure that the estate with which they are dealing should go through the excepted estates procedure, rather than the full inheritance tax procedure. That is all that is happening.
