Time taken to settle an Estate

eddyinfreehold

Quite a while back I joined this forum because I was surprised how long it took to settle an Estate with HMRC. I think we are now within an ace of winding everything up so I thought I'd post a recent timescale.

The date of death was February 2016. The Estate involved a modest property and savings. Even with the transferable allowance for death of the first spouse many years before, there was some IHT to pay. Our solicitor filed all the IHT forms in August 2016. We received ackowledgement of receipt in November 2016 with approval of the Provisional Calculation letter. We paid the Provisional IHT sum the same week. In early December 2016 we received the ID Number that allowed us to apply for a Grant of Probate. This was given in late December 2016. We made telephone calls to HMRC about every two months from then on and were told in July and September the account had been sent to HMRC Compliance. In mid November we had a letter to confirm this, and just before Christmas 2017 we had a letter from Compliance in Edinburgh saying that the District Valuer had been asked to check our submitted valuation of the property involved. We had a letter a couple of days ago saying that the District Valuer agreed the valuation and there was no further IHT due. The whole process has taken 23 months.

Without passing comment, I thought it would be useful for people to know how long an Estate takes to trundle through the mill.

Yorkshireman99

eddyinfreehold wrote: »

Quite a while back I joined this forum because I was surprised how long it took to settle an Estate with HMRC. I think we are now within an ace of winding everything up so I thought I'd post a recent timescale.

The date of death was February 2016. The Estate involved a modest property and savings. Even with the transferable allowance for death of the first spouse many years before, there was some IHT to pay. Our solicitor filed all the IHT forms in August 2016. We received ackowledgement of receipt in November 2016 with approval of the Provisional Calculation letter. We paid the Provisional IHT sum the same week. In early December 2016 we received the ID Number that allowed us to apply for a Grant of Probate. This was given in late December 2016. We made telephone calls to HMRC about every two months from then on and were told in July and September the account had been sent to HMRC Compliance. In mid November we had a letter to confirm this, and just before Christmas 2017 we had a letter from Compliance in Edinburgh saying that the District Valuer had been asked to check our submitted valuation of the property involved. We had a letter a couple of days ago saying that the District Valuer agreed the valuation and there was no further IHT due. The whole process has taken 23 months.

Without passing comment, I thought it would be useful for people to know how long an Estate takes to trundle through the mill.

I am not sure if this is typical of the time HMR&C take but is does illustrate what a complete and utter shambles they are. I would strongly suggest you write a foral letter of complaint to them and copy it to your MP..