Who is responsible for the deceased's tax bill?

Keep_pedalling

That sounds like a horrible mess, as a matter of urgency you need to contact HMRC to inform them of the death, which should give you more breathing space.

With your husband holding a share in some of these properties it is not likely that those are held as tenants in common, which would mean the estate is not insolvent and that it needs administering. You really need to get professional advice here.

PS. Are these mortgages backed up with life insurance?

ljaneyr

They have no life insurance. Thanks for your help. Who would you advise we speak to about the business?

getmore4less

Someone needs to get on top of the finances both the self employment and the business, might need to go back a couple of years to get a clear picture of where things are as it seems no one has a clue so far.

Untill the enquiries are done it will not be clear if the estate is solvent or not so this needs to be done without intermeddling to start with.

What should not be done is paying any bills or selling things that would be intermeddling.

[STRIKE]Was there a will with named executors?[/STRIKE]

RAS

ljaneyr wrote: »

I have no experience in this area and don't really understand the idea of 'the estate' when everything was jointly owned with his wife? He also left no will...

Previous response.

If the OP's husband's name is on mortgages (plural I think?), I would have thought that the property is likely to be tenants in common?

OP, tell your husband to start by downloading all the registrations from the Land Registry so that he knows what the situation is regarding them. he needs to work out what was a joint tenancy and what was/is tenants in common.

Mum cannot just go selling properties or cars unless she owns them outright or has administered the estate.

I know she is grieving but what you are now asking about needs sorting out before anyone does anything else.

It is of course possible that your husband had a joint tenancy with his father and is the sole tenant now of one of more property?

getmore4less

If they held assets jointly with other than spouse then there will also be the isue of the transferable nil rate band not being 100% so that will need calculations, best done now mush harder in years time when you need to value things from years ago.

ljaneyr

Thank you so much for all of your replies. It is a bit like another language when you have never experienced it before but I've been reading up on joint tenants/ tenants in common and the rules of intestacy and it's beginning to make sense.

Again, thank you for your advice.

nom_de_plume

I 'suspect' rental property registered as joint tenants and used in the course of business would not enjoy the same immunity as a family home held in joint tenancy. If the husband was paying tax on say 50% of the income from the properties HMRC may well deem half of their value to be attributable to his estate.
Professional advice is a must here!

getmore4less

Joint assets have not been save from creditors for some time, depending on the size of debts it can be worth a creditor taking action to recover their money.

Given the complexity of the deceased finances a full inventory and account is going to be worth doing even if a grant and capital return are not required.

Keep_pedalling

getmore4less wrote: »

Given the complexity of the deceased finances a full inventory and account is going to be worth doing even if a grant and capital return are not required.

Someone is going to need that to file a final SA return, where there probably be more tax to pay