HMRC to Get Power to Probe a Dead Person’s Tax Affairs With No Time Limit, Ending the Four-Year Rule

News | By Matt, Editor

HMRC will be able to demand information about a dead person’s tax affairs more than four years after they died, with a tribunal’s sign-off, under plans going into the next Finance Bill. Today the four-year limit is written into law. The Telegraph splashed on it this morning: “Taxman to hound bereaved for decades”.

The change sits in a HMRC policy paper updated on 3 November. The key passage is two sentences long, and it ends a protection grieving families have had since 2009.

Key facts

• Under Schedule 36 of the Finance Act 2008, an information notice to check the tax position of a person who has died “may not be given more than 4 years after the person’s death”.
• HMRC’s paper says this “will be updated to allow HMRC to issue an information notice more than 4 years after the person has died, subject to tribunal approval”.
• The draft legislation says HMRC’s application to the tribunal “may be made without notice”. The Telegraph reports executors and families need not be told until after the tribunal has decided.
• Ignore an information notice and HMRC can charge a £300 penalty, then up to £60 a day, according to HMRC’s own guidance.
• It takes effect from Royal Assent of Finance Bill 2026-27.
• HMRC says “the number of individuals impacted is expected to be very low”.

What actually changes

An information notice is HMRC’s legal demand for documents and details. When someone dies, it usually lands with the executors: often a son, a daughter or a widow sorting out the estate. Right now, once four years have passed since the death, that door shuts. HMRC can’t send one.

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Under the new rules there’s no cut-off. HMRC would go to the tax tribunal, ask permission, and if the judge agrees the notice can go out five, ten or twenty years after the funeral. The draft says an authorised HMRC officer has to agree to the application, and the tribunal has to be satisfied that a notice that late “is justified”. That’s a real safeguard and we’re not pretending otherwise. But the draft law lets that hearing happen without the family knowing it’s going on, so the first anyone hears is when the letter arrives.

This covers information demands, not a new tax. Nobody’s inheritance tax bill goes up because of it. What changes is how long a family has to keep the paperwork, and how long the taxman can come back asking for it.

In @Telegraph tonight:

HMRC is expanding its powers to investigate the dead.

Read the full story here:https://t.co/YHWDBn609j

— Madeleine Ross (@journomadeleine) November 12, 2026

The front page of today’s Daily Telegraph:

‘Taxman to hound bereaved for decades’#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/zXbe0BRlNE

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 13, 2026

Why HMRC says it needs this

The official reason is international. HMRC says ending the four-year limit “is required to bring the UK in line with international standards”, following changes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on swapping tax information between countries.

An HMRC source told the Telegraph: “This change will focus on those estates where there is an interest from another tax jurisdiction, which has longer assessment periods.”

HMRC also says families “will only be required to provide the information if they have it in their power and possession”, and a notice can still be challenged if the documents aren’t held or aren’t reasonably needed. HMRC’s own costing lists the Exchequer impact as “Nil” for every year, so it isn’t even expected to raise money.

That’s the government’s case. The trouble is that the law as drafted doesn’t say the power can only be used for overseas requests. It says more than four years after death, full stop, with a tribunal’s nod.

Families already in HMRC’s sights

This lands on families who are already being chased. A Telegraph Freedom of Information request reported earlier this year found HMRC had opened 14,027 inheritance tax investigations into bereaved families since 2022-23.

The Telegraph’s tax expert Mike Warburton said the proposals “raise the possibility that families could be chased for information” years after the death. The paper also reports that from April 2028, an executor who spots a mistake in the dead person’s tax return and fails to report it will be treated as having made a deliberate error, which opens up far longer time limits.

There’s more tucked into the same paper. HMRC’s financial institution notices will be widened to cover crypto firms. Identification notices will be able to ask for National Insurance numbers and email addresses. And the legal duty to give Parliament an annual report on how HMRC uses its financial institution notices is being scrapped, though HMRC says it will keep publishing the figures.

It all adds to a pattern we’ve been tracking. Last month Labour handed HMRC power to take money from bank accounts for small tax debts. On 9 November we reported how the Energy Bill could open HMRC records to energy firms. And this week a minister confirmed HMRC can photograph your home from the street without asking. Add the 93,000 pensioners fined for late tax returns and you get a taxman whose reach keeps growing.

The reaction

The story spread fast overnight, and the anger was mostly about timing: being chased while you’re grieving, or years after you thought the estate was closed.

This is shameful. They will pursue your relatives relentlessly when you are in your grave.

“Bereaved families face being “chased”by the taxman decades after a loved one’s death under Labour proposals.

Currently, HMRC can demand information from the families of deceased…

— sandieshoes 🇬🇧 (@sandieshoes) November 12, 2026

There is no doubt Labour are two tier.

We've got two tier justice.

Now we have a two tier economic society – benefit claimants and taxpayers.

Now, HMRC are changing the rules again. And guess who it targets??

Currently the estate of a deceased family member can be pursued by…

— Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@stuey_beef) November 12, 2026

The Treasury, run by Chancellor John Healey, answers for HMRC and for the Finance Bill this measure goes into. Neither the Treasury nor HMRC has said publicly why the change isn’t limited in law to the overseas cases it says it’s aimed at.

Our view

Four years is a long time to keep a dead parent’s bank statements in a shoebox. Most families do the honest thing. They pay the bills, settle the estate, and try to move on. A government that says only “a very low” number of people will be affected should be happy to write that limit into the law. Instead it’s asking for an open door, a hearing the family won’t be told about, and £60-a-day penalties behind it.

If this is really about OECD requests from overseas, say so in the legislation. Limit it to those cases, tell the family before the tribunal sits, and keep a hard stop. Otherwise it’s one more power for HMRC and one less protection for everyone else, at the worst moment in people’s lives.

Should HMRC be allowed to demand a dead person’s tax records more than four years after they die? Vote yes or no below.

Sources

The Telegraph, 12 November 2026; HMRC policy paper, updated 3 November 2026; HMRC draft legislation, Schedule 36 and s114; Finance Act 2008, Schedule 36, paragraph 22; HMRC information notices guidance CC/FS2; The Telegraph, inheritance tax investigations FOI.

Image: John Healey (U.S. Department of War / SECWAR, public domain) and headstones at St James churchyard, Hemingford Grey (Richard Humphrey / geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).