Valuing jewellery for the estate return: IHT400 and schedule IHT407

Scope, and one caution

Which form, and whether you need one at all

Not every estate files an IHT400. For deaths on or after 1 January 2022 most estates with no Inheritance Tax to pay report the value through the probate application itself rather than on a separate form, the old IHT205 having been withdrawn for those deaths. The full IHT400 account, with its schedules, is for estates that need to give HMRC the detail: where tax is due, where the estate is not an excepted estate, or where a claim or election has to be made.

Where an IHT400 is filed, jewellery goes on schedule IHT407, household and personal goods. That schedule also covers vehicles, boats, antiques, works of art and collections, and it explicitly does not cover anything the deceased owned jointly with someone else, which belongs on schedule IHT404 instead. A wedding ring owned outright is IHT407; a canteen of silver held jointly with a surviving spouse is IHT404.

The £1,500 line, exactly as HMRC draws it

Box 1 of IHT407 is the jewellery box, and its instruction is one sentence: enter details of any individual items of jewellery valued at £1,500 or more, and if you have a professional valuation, enclose a copy. The columns you complete for each such item are a description, the open market value at the date of death, and, if the item has already been sold, the date of the sale and the gross sale proceeds.

The important word is individual. The threshold applies to a single item, not to the jewellery box as a whole. A drawer holding a 9ct wedding band, a broken curb chain, four odd earrings and a silver charm bracelet might total several hundred pounds and still contain nothing that needs listing separately. It goes into the general household and personal goods total further down the form instead.

What crosses the line in an ordinary estate is fairly predictable: a diamond solitaire, a branded watch, a signed piece, a heavy 22ct set, a piece the deceased had insured separately. If a previous insurance schedule exists, look at it, then note carefully that an insurance figure is not the figure HMRC wants, which is the next section.

What open market value means, and what it is not

Open market value is what the item would have fetched if it had been sold on the open market on the date of death. Gov.uk puts it about as plainly as it can be put: to value household and personal items, work out how much you would have got if you had sold them, and you can search for similar items on online marketplaces to help. It is a realisation figure, not an aspiration.

Three figures get mistaken for it, and all three are wrong for this purpose.

For scrap and broken gold, this cuts a knot that worries a lot of executors. The open market value of a broken 9ct chain is close to what a metal buyer will pay for it, because that is genuinely the market for a broken 9ct chain. Nobody is buying it to wear. Recording it honestly at its metal value is accurate, not pessimistic, and a documented assay showing the purity, the weight and the rate used is a clean evidence trail for exactly that figure.

The reverse also applies. Where a piece has resale life in it as jewellery, a wearable 18ct eternity ring, a good watch, a piece with a name on it, its open market value is what a second-hand buyer would pay, which is more than the metal alone. Writing such a piece into the accounts at scrap value understates the estate. Our guide to probate jewellery valuation sets out when a registered valuer is the right call.

If items have already been sold

The form anticipates this. Alongside the open market value at the date of death, box 1 asks for the date of sale and the gross sale proceeds for anything that has since been sold. Both numbers go on: HMRC is interested in the date-of-death value for the tax calculation and in the sale proceeds as a cross-check on it.

HMRC’s internal Inheritance Tax manual is explicit that where estate items are sold for less than market value, the full open market value still goes on the IHT407. A discounted or family sale does not reduce the reported figure. If the sale figure and the date-of-death figure differ substantially, the sensible move is to say why in the covering correspondence rather than leave HMRC to wonder, movements in the gold price between the date of death and the date of sale are a perfectly ordinary explanation, and a dated valuation evidences it.

A practical method for a jewellery box

1. Photograph everything, laid out, with hallmarks visible where you can get them.
2. Separate anything that could conceivably be worth £1,500 on its own: stones, branded watches, signed pieces, heavy high-carat items.
3. For that separated group, a professional valuation from a registered valuer is the safer route; IHT407 asks you to enclose a copy of any professional valuation you have.
4. For the remainder, make a realistic estimate of what each piece would have fetched on the date of death: for plain gold and silver, the weight, the purity and the metal price on that date give the metal figure to start from.
5. Enter the qualifying individual items in box 1, and the remainder in the general household and personal goods total.
6. Keep every valuation, photograph and receipt with the estate file.

What HMRC looks at when it queries an IHT407

HMRC’s own guidance to its investigators is a useful window into what draws attention, and none of it is mysterious. It asks whether the figure returned is consistent with the deceased’s circumstances: a large or valuable house with a very small household-goods figure invites a question, as does an occupation that suggests the deceased collected or dealt in valuable items. It also asks where the proceeds of any items sold before death are reflected in the estate.

The lesson for an ordinary executor is not to be defensive, it is to be legible. A modest figure supported by photographs and a dated written valuation is easy to accept. The same figure with nothing behind it is the one that generates correspondence.

If you are a solicitor or will writer rather than an executor, the professional-level treatment of the same ground, section 160, the two £1,500 tests, why there is no chattels equivalent of the section 191 loss relief, and the section 216(3A) safe harbour, is in our practitioner note on valuing jewellery for inheritance tax.

Sources

1. HMRC form IHT407: household and personal goods
2. GOV.UK: valuing the estate of someone who has died, estimate the value
3. GOV.UK: check if you need to send full details of the estate

Checked against these sources on 11 September 2026. This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.