Probate Valuations
Valuations for Probate / Inheritance Tax:
Valuations and inventories of home contents and personal effects (chattels) are invaluable tools to the Executor or Trustee of an Estate, who may have to identify individual items that have been bequeathed or passed on in Trust to others.
The professional adviser to the estate (usually a solicitor) will advise you if a valuation is required for taxation purposes. Values can be put to individual items or given as an overall figure as appropriate. Generally if an items is considered to have a value of £500 of more it must be recorded separately on the IHT205 form together with the overall values for the chattels.
The HM Government's website provides the guidance for this process: https://www.gov.uk/valuing-estate-of-someone-who-died
You need an estimate of the estate’s value to find out if there’s Inheritance Tax to pay.
The estate won’t have to pay tax as long as it either:
- all passes to the dead person’s spouse or civil partner, a charity or a community amateur sports club
- has a value below the Inheritance Tax threshold of £325,000
If the person who died was widowed or is giving away their home to their children, the tax threshold can be higher.
Whether there’s tax to pay will affect how you report the estate’s value, and the deadlines for reporting and paying any tax.
The forms for completing this can be found on the government's website, including the IHT205 form:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inheritance-tax-return-of-estate-information-iht205-2011
However at an often extremely distressing and confusing time for anyone asked to act as an Executor or Trustee, where you will likely be asked myriad questions and carry out various tasks, you need to be sure of advice and service that you can trust.
This is where Batemans can help - having discussed your requirements we can arrange to visit to a property to view and note all relevant items included in the Estate, we can then provide you with a Valuation Report. This will be carried out by one of our SOFAA accredited Professional Valuers, providing you with reassurance and confidence that the job will be completely to a excellent standard.
The Valuation Report comprises an inventory with many individual items described (often only those of higher value - not everything will be explicitly described) and an overall total valuation of chattels for Probate / Inheritance Tax purposes.
These figures can then be used to complete the IHT205 form, to identify any items that are worth selling on behalf of the Estate (which of course we can also help with). It also provides a single source of information to allow members of a family to all see how much the main items are worth should they be instructed to divide collections between them (so that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet) - we have found that this approach has helped diffuse many potentially uncomfortable family situations.
We will prepare a typed Valuation Report, including the schedule of items and certificate, copies of which will be dispatched to you and your solicitor (if required), with an electronic copy or further copies on request.
We charge a very competitive and extremely simple hourly rate to carry out the valuation, including travel time (if required) and preparation of the final report.
Cost of Probate / Inheritance Tax Valuation: £120 (£100 plus VAT) per hour.
Batemans has conducted thousands of Professional Valuations over 20+ years of serving Stamford, Rutland and all the surrounding counties - we can provide you with a trusted, cost effective, and efficient service, and look forward to hearing from you soon.
