You report on a plan of dubious legality to impose enormous probate fees to fund the justice system, using a statutory instrument to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of this new taxation (Truss’s plan to increase probate fees may not be legally enforceable, 6 April).
This plan is daft as well as devious. Probate fees are not, as you put it, “payable when claiming inheritances”. They are paid by executors, and in the case of intestacy, administrators, to obtain authority to administer the estate of a deceased person. Executors may or may not be beneficiaries. Although the draft legislation is adamant that this would be an upfront fee, it is only once probate has been granted that it is possible to assess the value of an estate taking into account all assets and liabilities. This charge therefore could only be imposed retrospectively. That would reveal it for what it is: an increase in inheritance tax, but one not levied in a smoothly progressive manner.
I would support raising the rate of inheritance tax on very large estates, but I thought this was contrary to Tory policy.
Professor Ruth Levitas
Bristol
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