claiming relief from 1st death items on 2nd death IHT400

Heyhoho

I am completeing IHT400 for my father who survived my mother by about 3 years.  Everything was left to him in my mothers will except for a few small UK charity bequests and at the time we only applied for probate for my mother without needing to do IHT.  

1. where can I now enter figures to gain tax relief for my mother's funeral costs and bequests to charity?

2. IHT436 (unused RNRB claim) asks for an IHT reference number but of course we don't have one for my mother?

Any help would be very much appreciated  

Keep_pedalling

1. You don’t need to, they do not affect your ability to claim the full transferable NRB to your father’s estate. Funeral costs and charitable bequest are exempt from IHT and don’t reduce the amount of NRB transferable to the surviving spouse’s estate.

2. If you don’t have one then simply leave it blank.

Is the value of your father’s estate over £650k? If it is not then you don’t need to do an IHT return at all. 

Heyhoho

Thanks very much for the reply.  My problem is finding where I can claim my mother's funeral costs and charitable bequests so they are removed from the taxable total.  House prices have pushed the estate into IHT.

poppystar

Surely if this is your father’s estate it will only include his assets and what he inherited from your mother. This amount will have been after the funeral expenses and charitable requests of your mother were paid, so I’m not sure you can reduce his taxable estate now by these amounts as there were never in it. 

Keep_pedalling

Heyhoho said:

Thanks very much for the reply.  My problem is finding where I can claim my mother's funeral costs and charitable bequests so they are removed from the taxable total.  House prices have pushed the estate into IHT.

You can’t, those costs never passed into your father’s estate. Have you taken into account all the exemptions. With those you have up to £1M in exemptions.

Heyhoho

Thank you both - yes I realise now my logic was broken.