This is a bit of a departure from my usual themes but it reflects the original purpose of my blogging, an outlet to test, refine and challenge my own thinking.
On this occasion, it is also deeply personal. Acting as an executor of a will is often presented as an honour, a mark of trust and it is one I was proud to accept. I use the past tense deliberately. The reality was very different. The role consumed a significant part of five years of my life and imposed a level of stress I have not encountered in any other context. It carries a very real and largely unspoken, health warning and risk to close realtionships in the most distressing of ways.
With the benefit of hindsight, I would urge anyone to think very carefully before accepting such a responsibility. The world has changed, yet the expectations placed on executors have intensified. Increasingly, the role is being reshaped by policy decisions that appear disconnected from the practical and emotional realities involved, placing ever greater burden on families and individuals who are, more often than not simply trying to honour the wishes of someone they have lost.
There is something distinctly un-British, indeed, profoundly inhumane, about the state inserting itself so forcefully at the precise moment of private grief. Inheritance tax (IHT) has long carried the uncomfortable but real scent of double taxation but its latest extension into pensions, coupled with an unyielding six month payment deadline, crosses from policy into cruelty.
Bereavement is not an administrative event. It is disorientation, paperwork, family / relationship tension and often financial uncertainty compressed into a period where clarity is in short supply. Yet the Treasury’s position is stark, settle within six months or face punitive interest of 7.75%. This is not merely tone deaf, it is structurally indifferent to the lived reality of loss and tantamount to institutionally orchestrated theft.
The inclusion of pensions within estates from 2027 (projected to raise £1.5 billion annually by 2030) is presented as fiscal prudence. In truth, it is marginal revenue in the context of national finances, extracted at maximum emotional cost. The policy will drag more estates often asset rich but cash poor, particularly among small medium business (SMB) owners, into a complex and unforgiving tax net. Executors, frequently family members are left exposed, liable for sums tied to assets they may not yet even be able to identify, let alone access. Not to forget the byproduct of killing a legitimate business due to forced sale and the hardship on employees (working people of ALL classes).
Policies like this do not just raise revenue they reshape behaviour and set perniciously poor examples. By increasing personal exposure and compressing timelines, the state is effectively hollowing out the pool of lay executors, replacing civic duty with risk aversion. No tot forget the undermining of business continuity expectations that will supress entrepreneurship.
What emerges is a far more invidious dynamic that delay is no longer incidental, it is quietly profitable for the Treasury like a parasite. As estates stall under the weight of complexity and compressed deadlines, value is steadily bled away through interest accruing, fees compounding due to enforced reliance on sometimes unmotivated professionals, assets disposed of in haste rather than prudence. The machinery of administration, strained by design, becomes a mechanism of perverse revenue extraction in its own right, with the shadow side of supressing small business enthusiasm. What is not currently taken cleanly through the headline tax is instead worn down through friction, until the residue that finally reaches beneficiaries is diminished not just by policy but by the very inefficiencies that policy has engineered, while the Treasury continues to insist it is all about efficiency.
Even supportive voices within Parliament have acknowledged the administrative strain and inhuman burden. The House of Lords warned explicitly of cash flow pressures and personal liability. Industry experts describe an administrative nightmare that will be compounded by the new pension IHT tax. Yet still the government insists on speed over compassion, it exudes a dark immorality / ideology.
As for the 7 year rule, in a society that claims to champion mental wellbeing, it is a cruel and lingering psychological burden forcing families to live under a shadow of uncertainty for years, long after the loss itself should have been allowed to settle.
If this is what efficient tax collection now looks like, one is left to wonder whether the Exchequer has begun benchmarking itself not against principles of fairness but against the stopwatch. To press grieving families and businesses with deadlines they cannot realistically meet, to levy interest on assets they cannot yet access and to do so for revenue that barely registers against the national balance sheet, is not discipline, it is opportunism dressed up as policy. A government that cannot distinguish between liquidity and loss, between administration and anguish, risks revealing something far more troubling at a DNA level than fiscal resolve, a quiet erosion of judgement at the very point where humanity should matter most.
Tax policy, at its best, reflects not just economic necessity but societal values. This does neither. It signals a willingness to prioritise marginal gains in revenue over dignity in death, and respect for the risks taken by our SMB community that represents over 95% of businesses in the UK. It’s a trade-off that should give any serious policymaker pause.
If there is any measure of humanity left in the system, this invidious tax will be reconsidered, repealed and its modest tax benefit replaced with a more proportionate approach, one that raises revenue without imposing such excessive administrative burden, risk to the SMB community and personal exposure on those already carrying the weight of loss.
Posted on April 19, 2026
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