How to complete IHT418: reporting a trust interest, or a trust event as trustee

If you're dealing with the deceased's own estate and they simply had the right to benefit from a trust someone else set up, complete Section A (naming the trust), Section B (the trustees' details), Section C (ticking 'executor or administrator'), and Section D. You do not touch Sections E onward.

If a qualifying interest in possession in the trust has ended because someone died — whether or not that death also triggers the main IHT400 — you complete Sections E through I and the declaration.

If you're acting as both the deceased's executor and a trustee of the trust, this is the path you take, not Section D.

If the deceased could benefit from more than one trust, each needs its own IHT418 — do not try to combine them onto a single schedule even if the trusts share the same trustees or professional adviser.

Before valuing anything, check whether the deceased's interest is one of the specific categories the form lists: an interest in possession that started before 22 March 2006 and has continued unbroken, an immediate post-death interest, a disabled person's interest, a transitional serial interest, or a purchased interest in possession.

If none of these apply, the trust's value generally sits outside this schedule and the answer routes you to D4 instead of D2.

D2 is for houses, land, businesses, and shares/securities that gave the deceased control of the company held within the trust. D3 is for everything else — bank accounts, quoted shares without control, and similar.

The split matters because these categories are valued and reported differently elsewhere in the IHT400 account; don't lump everything into D3 for convenience.

If the deceased's right to the trust's assets only arises after someone else's benefit ends (for example, someone else currently receives the income, and the deceased's estate won't get anything until that person also dies), this is reported separately at D6 — the estimated value goes to IHT400 box 76, not into the main trust-interest total.

Name and age of the person currently benefiting go at D7.

Standard identifying detail, plus their marital status and — critically — whether the event being reported happened before or on/after 6 April 2025.

This date split runs through the rest of Section E, because it decides whether the OLD domicile-based questions or the NEW long-term-residence questions apply to this particular event.

For events on or after 6 April 2025, the form asks whether the person who died — and separately, the settlor — was a 'long-term UK resident' at the relevant date.

A 'No' answer routes to a separate schedule (D31 or D31a) rather than continuing in the main form.

This is where the form genuinely departs from anything a pre-2025 trust filing looked like, and it is the section most likely to need a professional's input rather than a best guess.

The person who created the trust, not necessarily the person who has just died — a trust can run for decades after its settlor's own death, with the settlor's historic domicile or residence status still governing how it's taxed today.

Get their name, dates, and residence history from the trust deed and any earlier IHT filings the trust has made, not from memory.

A checklist of supporting schedules (D32–D39) triggered by what the trust holds — stocks and shares, loans from the trust, insurance policies, land, Agricultural or Business Relief claims, or assets outside the UK.

Tick every box that applies; each triggers its own supporting form rather than being answered inline on IHT418 itself.

Eighteen categories of UK asset (G1–G18), each split between Column A (tax not payable by instalments) and Column B (tax that can be paid by instalments — broadly land, businesses, and control holdings of shares).

The totals at G19 and G20 carry the two columns forward separately through the rest of the form — they are never combined.

Liabilities are deducted per column (H1/H2), then exemptions and reliefs — including Agricultural and Business Relief, entered per item with the rate claimed (100% or 50%, following the same 6 April 2026 cap that applies on IHT412) — at H3/H4.

The chargeable totals (H5/H8), any foreign-asset additions, and the grand total at H11 are the figures the tax on this event is calculated from.

Completing IHT418 does not register the trust with HMRC — that's the Trust Registration Service, a separate ongoing duty most UK trusts have (register within 90 days of creation or of becoming tax-liable; keep it updated within 90 days of any change).

Check the trust's TRS status while you're gathering this form's facts, since the two are often out of date together.

Working out 10-out-of-20-tax-years UK residence for a settlor with an international history — years abroad, split years, historic domicile elections — is genuinely technical, and getting it wrong changes whether IHT is due on the trust's non-UK assets at all, not just the amount.

If there is ANY question mark over the settlor's residence history, get a solicitor or accountant who handles international trusts before signing the declaration.

The declaration requires every person liable to pay the tax to sign — for a trust with multiple trustees, that usually means all of them, not just whoever is completing the paperwork.

Confirm who is 'liable' for this specific chargeable event before assuming one trustee's signature is sufficient.