Rubbish Check
Daily Mail Money · 8 August 2026
source“How some pensions could soon be taxed at 91% on death – what you can do to protect yours”
R5/ 10
Selective
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates Daily Mail Money's claim that pensions "could soon be taxed at 91% on death" a 5/10 because the figure is a real but narrow worst-case scenario, built from a single hypothetical couple sitting exactly at the £2m residence-nil-rate-band taper threshold, not a representative outcome for most inherited pensions.
The Verdict
Selective. The 91% figure is a genuine calculation, not an invention, but it's the most extreme point on a spectrum the Mail chose to headline rather than contextualise. The article itself shows a second, more common scenario landing at 73%, and doesn't flag until deep in the piece that the source, NFU Mutual, is a financial adviser with a commercial interest in selling IHT planning services around this exact fear.
What actually happened
From April 2027, unspent pension pots will be counted as part of a deceased person's estate for inheritance tax purposes, a policy announced in the Autumn Budget with proposals to include any unspent pension benefits in the owner's Inheritance Tax calculation from 6 April 2027. NFU Mutual modelled how this interacts with existing income tax rules on pensions inherited after age 75, producing worked examples for the Mail showing effective tax rates as high as 91% on the pension portion of specific estates.
Key facts
- The 91% example is a married couple with a £2m estate plus £700,000 in combined pension pots (£1.7m home, £300k savings, £350k pensions each), dying after 75, where children withdraw the pensions in full immediately.
- In that scenario the extra tax bill totals £639,326 (£820,000 IHT plus £219,326 income tax), which is 91% of the £700,000 pension pots specifically, not 91% of the whole estate.
- A second example in the same article, a 74-year-old single mother with a £500,000 estate and £500,000 pension, produces a lower but still severe 73% effective rate.
- The trigger mechanism is the residence nil-rate band taper, which withdraws £1 for every £2 an estate exceeds £2m, so the 91% figure depends on the couple sitting exactly at that threshold.
- Median age of death is cited as 81.8 for men and 85.5 for women, meaning most people die after 75 and would face the income tax leg of this "triple whammy."
- NFU Mutual is a financial services company that sells inheritance tax and pension advice, a detail the article names but doesn't foreground.
What to watch for
Watch whether HMRC's final rules (due before April 2027) soften the interaction between IHT and income tax that creates this stacking effect, since the article notes the government has not yet addressed the clash. Also watch how other outlets frame the same NFU Mutual data: if most lead with "91%" rather than explaining the taper-threshold mechanism, that's the tell the industry-commissioned worst case has become the default headline number.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
