Whether you need the form at all
Form IHT407 lists the deceased’s household and personal goods and is filed with the full IHT400 return. Most estates never send one. HMRC’s guidance on reporting an estate’s value says plainly that “most estates are excepted estates”, and an excepted estate with no inheritance tax to pay does not give full details. HMRC gives four routes to that status.
| Route | The test |
|---|---|
| Below the threshold | The estate’s value falls below the current inheritance tax threshold |
| Transferred threshold | The estate is worth £650,000 or less and an unused threshold is being transferred from a spouse or civil partner who died first |
| Spouse or charity | Everything passes to a spouse or civil partner living in the UK, or to a qualifying charity, and the estate is worth less than £3 million |
| Foreign domiciliary | The deceased lived permanently outside the UK and their UK assets are worth £150,000 or less |
Different rules apply to deaths on or before 31 December 2021. The contents still have to be valued in an excepted estate; the figure goes into the probate application rather than onto a schedule, and it is arrived at the same way.
Where inheritance tax is due, the estate’s value must be reported within a year on IHT400, probate cannot be applied for until that is done, and the tax is payable by the end of the sixth month after the death to avoid interest.
The six boxes, and where the total goes
The form itself runs to four pages and was last revised in July 2018. HMRC’s notes are exact about how much detail each box wants: “We only want individual values for the assets described in boxes 1 to 3 on Schedule IHT407. All other household goods can be added together and the total value entered in box 4.”
| Box | What it takes | What each entry needs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jewellery, individual items valued at £1,500 or more | Description, and the open market value at the date of death |
| 2 | Vehicles, boats and aircraft, including vintage and classic cars | Manufacturer, model, year of manufacture or first registration, registration number, condition at the date of death, and mileage for cars |
| 3 | Antiques, works of art and collections: antique furniture, paintings, sculpture, porcelain, and collections of books, stamps, coins, medals and wine | Description, and the open market value at the date of death |
| 4 | Everything else as one figure: ordinary furniture, domestic items, and jewellery under £1,500 | A single total, with no list |
| 5 | A yes or no: were any items in box 4 listed individually on the household insurance policy | If yes, enclose a copy of the policy and its schedule |
| 6 | The total of boxes 1, 2, 3 and 4 | Carried across to box 55 on form IHT400 |
Boxes 1, 2 and 3 each carry a further column that executors skip: if the item has already been sold, give the date of the sale and the gross sale proceeds. HMRC reads that column against the value beside it.
Box 5 is the one people answer without thinking. An insurer’s schedule itemising a ring, a painting or a clock gives HMRC a figure to hold against the estate’s own, and the two are reached on opposite bases. Answer it accurately and let the difference be explained by what an insurance value is for.
Goods the deceased owned jointly with someone else are not on this form at all. They go on IHT404.
What open market value means to HMRC
The basis is set in the IHT400 notes, and the wording is worth reading twice: “The open market value is the realistic selling price for the item. This is the price the item would have been likely to fetch if sold at auction or otherwise advertised publicly.” The notes then say what it is not: “you need to use the open market value at the date of death, not an insurance or replacement value.”
That distinction moves more money than anything else on the form. A replacement valuation answers what it would cost to buy an equivalent from a dealer tomorrow; the form asks what it would have fetched, from the seller’s side, on the day of the death. The second figure is a fraction of the first, and using the first inflates the estate and the tax with it.
The notes add an instruction for anyone hiring a valuer: “Remember to tell the valuer that you want the open market value of the items at the date of death.” Asked without that sentence, a valuer produces the insurance figure, because that is what most of their work is.
The £1,500 line, and what it does not apply to
The £1,500 threshold printed on the form is a jewellery threshold. Box 1 asks for individual items of jewellery valued at £1,500 or more, and the jewellery guide covers how that figure is reached, why the insurance schedule gives a different one, and the fineness marks that set the metal floor under a piece. Nothing in box 3 carries a figure at all, so an antique, a picture or a collection is listed on its own whatever it is worth.
A second £1,500 appears in the notes and does a different job. There it is the point at which HMRC advises getting a valuation: “If you think any item may be worth more than £1,500, or you’re not sure, we advise you to get a professional valuation.” That covers everything in the house, not only the jewellery.
For the rest, the notes are permissive: “You do not have to get a professional valuation for ordinary household and personal goods where you can use publicly available data to estimate the value, for example, to value second hand cars.” An executor pricing a sofa, a washing machine and a bedroom suite against what the same things make at a general sale is doing what HMRC asks. The probate valuation guide covers what a valuer charges and when paying for one is the cheaper decision.
What a house’s contents come to
HMRC publishes no average, and there is no benchmark figure an executor can put in box 4 and defend. The total is built from the house rather than from a table.
Two anchors set the range. Contents of an ordinary three-bedroom house with nothing collectable in it land between £500 and £3,000, because second-hand furniture and domestic goods sell for very little. The contents of a Sussex farmhouse, catalogued as 42 lots of furniture, pictures and effects, were estimated at £4,000 to £6,000 and hammered at £7,300 in May 2026. Both are illustrative figures from the price records.
What separates those two houses sits in boxes 1 to 3 rather than box 4: silver, jewellery, pictures, a stamp album, a medal group, a run of first editions. Those are also the first things a clearance firm removes, so value them before anything leaves the building, in the order the house clearance guide works through the rooms.
The schedules that sit beside it
Three other forms interact with IHT407.
| Form | When it applies | Where the relief is claimed |
|---|---|---|
| IHT404 | Household and personal goods the deceased owned jointly with another person | The goods are reported there, not on IHT407 |
| IHT408 | Beneficiaries donate some or all of the goods to a charity | Items still appear on IHT407; the exemption is deducted at box 92 on IHT400 |
| IHT420 | Conditional exemption for chattels that are part of the national heritage | Value in box 55, exemption deducted at box 92 |
IHT408 replaces the deed that would otherwise be needed: without it, beneficiaries who give the contents to a charity shop can claim charity exemption only by signing an instrument of variation. Every beneficiary who inherited the goods signs the schedule, and for deaths on or after 6 April 2012 HMRC requires evidence that the charity knows which goods it is receiving. A receipt from the shop is enough.
One exemption applies before any of those forms. The IHT400 notes state that “certain awards given to the deceased for gallantry, such as the Victoria Cross, are excluded from Inheritance Tax”. A campaign medal is an ordinary chattel and goes in box 3.
Before you send it
Photograph every room before anything is moved, and keep the account of sale for anything already sold, because the gross figure on it is what boxes 1 to 3 ask for. Enclose a copy of any professional valuation. Check that box 6 adds up and that the same figure reaches box 55 on the IHT400, where it joins the gross and net value of the estate.
The executor is personally responsible for the accuracy of the return, and the entry most likely to be questioned is a single item put in low that sells high a year later. Value anything the estate is minded to sell as though it were being sold, which is the calculation the auctions guide works through from the saleroom’s end. Where they go to a saleroom, boxes 1 to 3 take the gross hammer price before commission, as the estate auctions guide sets out. The rest of the probate section covers the steps either side of the form.
