The Inland Revenue should learn from methods used in the US to crack down on avoidance of inheritance tax, the National Audit Office said on Thursday. It urged the Revenue to adopt new ways of identifying underpaid tax, such as making greater use of statistical data on the make-up of estates. The Revenue should also make greater efforts to measure the “tax gap” to establish the level of overall compliance with the tax.
But Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, praised the Revenue for recent improvements in the handling and checking of inheritance tax returns. “The Inland Revenue's management of inheritance tax has improved over the last five years,” he said.
