Abolish Inheritance Tax

The paper calls inheritance tax a tax on death and an interference with the duty to provide for one’s children. Its sharpest practical case is family farms and small firms that are rich in assets and poor in cash. It criticises the Labour plan, from the autumn 2024 Budget, to charge inheritance tax on agricultural assets — originally 20% above £1 million from April 2026, later with a threshold the paper says was raised to £2.5 million after farm protests.

On the money, it cites the Office for Budget Responsibility: about £9 billion in 2025/26, roughly 0.7% of tax revenue. It points to a YouGov poll, taken before a previous autumn budget, in which 54% wanted the tax scrapped. It argues the Treasury’s own early estimate of the farm measure was a little over £500 million a year by the end of the decade.

The offset it offers is not a replacement tax. It proposes cutting taxpayer-funded DEI roles (a Conservative Way Forward figure of up to £212 million is cited), ending what it describes as state funding for campaigning NGOs (a figure of £880 million is cited for charities it says push open borders, “trans ideology” and climate alarmism), and tightening charity-law privileges for political organisations. It also notes that returning working-age welfare to pre-pandemic levels has been put at a £47 billion saving — several times the inheritance-tax take.