THE Prime Minister has given a fresh indication he would like to increase the inheritance tax threshold so it hits only the "very wealthy".
David Cameron said people who did not feel "in any way mega-rich" were being affected by the tax.
He told a gathering of older workers and pensioners in London that people should be able to pass their family home to their children "rather than leave it to the taxman".
Inheritance tax is levied at a rate of 40% on the value of an estate above the £325,000 threshold - with married couples able effectively to combine their allowances to £650,000.
The Tories had promised in 2007 that when they were in Government they would raise the threshold to £1 million, but the policy did not feature in the Coalition agreement in 2010.
Mr Cameron said he would like to see more progress on the tax, and said Chancellor George Osborne was keen to address it.
He said: "Inheritance tax is a tax that should be paid by the very wealthy. I think you should be able to pass a family home on to your children rather than leave it to the taxman."
He said he had ambitions to go beyond the current £650,000 threshold for couples.
"I would like to see that go further because I think even at £650,000, particularly in some parts of the country, you see someone who has worked hard, they have put money into their house, they have done it up to improve it and they want to leave it to their children and they don't feel they are in any way the mega-rich, and they feel 'I should be able to do that without having 40% of it knocked off'.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article