Badenoch pledges inheritance tax changes and job tax cut

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch used her party’s conference in Birmingham on October 7 to announce proposed inheritance-tax changes and a cut in employer National Insurance for younger workers, presenting them as part of a future Conservative government’s economic agenda. The measures are pledges, conditional on the party winning power, and have not been enacted. Badenoch said a future government would change the law so family homes could be passed on without inheritance tax. She also proposed allowing couples to leave an additional £1 million to their families tax-free. She said the combined changes would cut by more than half the number of families paying inheritance tax, though the reports of her speech do not clarify how the additional allowance would work alongside the family-home exemption and existing thresholds. Badenoch said she ultimately wanted to abolish inheritance tax altogether when the government could afford it. Under current rules, the tax is generally 40% on the value of an estate above £325,000, with a higher threshold potentially applying when a home is passed to a direct descendant, according to one account of the policy.