As IHT moves from a concern for the few to a planning issue for many, Business Relief (“BR”) presents a unique opportunity to help both families manage an increasingly punitive IHT landscape, while helping to unlock the long-term private capital that UK businesses need to scale. If structured and communicated properly, BR should not be seen merely as a defensive tax-planning tool, but as a productive route through which intergenerational wealth can be directed towards SMEs, employment, innovation and regional growth. In doing so, estate planning could become a catalyst for the wider UK economy at precisely the time it is most needed.
The nil-rate band has remained fixed at £325,000 since 2009 and remains frozen until 05 April 2031. Over that period, rising property and asset values have brought more families within the scope of IHT, while reforms from April 2027 will bring most unspent pension funds and death benefits into estates for IHT purposes. These changes are already sharpening the focus on estate planning. HMRC data released in September 2026 backed this up with IHT receipts for April 2026 to August 2026 being £3.8 billion, an increase of £100 million on the same period last year. For advisers and clients alike, the direction of travel should encourage earlier conversations around IHT planning.
In 2025, circa 5% of estates paid IHT. However, as a result of ongoing threshold freezes, rule changes and overall fiscal drag, the OBR projects that by 2029/30, this figure will rise to an estimated 10% of estates. Against this backdrop, BR is becoming increasingly relevant to mainstream estate planning conversations rather than remaining just a specialist solution for a relatively narrow group of clients. With qualifying AIM shares now receiving 50% BR, advisers may increasingly look towards unquoted (also known as unlisted) BR schemes where qualifying shares can still attract 100% relief within the newly increased £2.5 million allowance. Therefore, is it time to admit that these strategies can and should be used as a way to drive growth in the UK economy?
When investing into an unlisted BR scheme (typically known as an Estate Planning Service), an investor typically acquires shares in qualifying unquoted trading companies, which are high risk. (Your capital is at risk and you may get back less than you invest. These shares can be hard to sell, and their value can go down as well as up. These investments are not suitable for everyone, and investors should seek financial advice). Provided the relevant BR conditions are met, however, including the usual two-year ownership requirement, those shares can qualify for relief from IHT. The investment generally needs to remain qualifying and be held at death for the relief to apply. To claim the relief, the investment must be held continuously until death and so these investments are typically held for an average of five to 10 years. From April 2026, qualifying business assets can benefit from 100% relief up to a combined £2.5 million allowance, with any unused allowance potentially transferable between spouses or civil partners, while assets above the allowance can still qualify for 50% relief. (Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change in the future. Business Relief is only available if the shares qualify at the time of death).
For advisers, accessing and administering these investments is also becoming increasingly digital. GrowthInvest, for example, provides a digital route into IHT planning solutions, offering access to both AIM-based and unquoted BR investments alongside other alternative investments. By bringing applications, reporting and portfolio visibility together in one place, the GrowthInvest platform can help simplify some of the administration associated with incorporating these investments into a client’s wider financial planning strategy.
This creates an opportunity to position BR as part of a wider growth strategy. Rather than capital being concentrated in traditional wealth preservation assets, appropriately structured BR investments can direct funding towards trading businesses, infrastructure and other productive parts of the economy. The conversation should therefore move beyond simply preserving wealth between generations and towards preserving and growing the businesses that create wealth in the first place.
The economic benefits can be significant, with investment into smaller and growing businesses supporting employment, innovation, regional development and productivity. Additionally, entrepreneurs gain access to patient, long-term capital that can give them the confidence to invest, recruit, expand and compete more effectively. By providing an alternative source of finance where traditional bank lending may be constrained, BR investment can help bridge the UK’s scale-up funding gap, keep more capital working domestically and support viable businesses across the regions.
This is where BR could become particularly relevant to the Government’s wider growth agenda. Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has placed regional growth, devolution and the economic potential of the North at the heart of his political programme. If the ambition is to generate “good growth in every postcode”, then encouraging greater flows of private capital into small and growing UK businesses should sit naturally alongside investment in infrastructure and public services. BR, alongside established tax-efficient investment frameworks such as EIS and VCTs, offers an existing mechanism through which private wealth can support that objective. Rather than viewing these reliefs solely through the lens of tax forgone, policymakers should also consider the capital they can mobilise, the businesses they can support and the economic activity they can generate.
The infrastructure through which advisers and investors access these opportunities has a role to play too. By making BR and other tax-efficient investments easier to access, administer and monitor, the GrowthInvest platform can help reduce some of the practical barriers to putting private capital to work. The easier it becomes for advisers to incorporate these strategies into appropriate client planning, the greater the potential pool of long-term capital available to the underlying businesses.
At a time when the UK is searching for ways to unlock private capital, support SMEs and rebalance economic growth across the regions, BR represents an established pool of patient capital hiding in plain sight. Used intelligently, it can help families plan for an increasingly complex IHT landscape while directing long-term investment towards the businesses on which future growth depends. Perhaps it is time we stopped viewing those two objectives as separate.