IHTM36276 - Improving future compliance: provisional estimates of value

If your investigations suggest that taxpayers have included an estimated value without making the sort of enquiries that they could reasonably have been expected to make or have entered a nominal value then you may wish to offer the agents the following advice to help improve compliance on any future cases that they deal with.

‘Provisional estimates of value are acceptable and may be allowed by the Inheritance Act 1984 but only if the fullest enquiries reasonably practicable in the circumstances have first been made to establish the open market value. We expect personal representatives to be able to show that they have done so and we also expect estimates to be reasoned and properly considered.

Nominal values are not acceptable, neither are estimated values where it is apparent that other enquiries to establish a value could and should have been made but were not.’