Is There VAT on Probate Fees? Yes, at 20%

The short answer: a firm's probate and estate administration fee is a standard-rated supply of legal services at 20%. There is no VAT exemption for probate work; it sits in the same place as conveyancing, litigation and any other legal service. The standard rate has been 20% since 4 January 2011. A firm whose taxable turnover does not exceed the £90,000 VAT registration threshold (from 1 April 2024) is not required to register, and so does not charge VAT, but most firms with a meaningful probate caseload are registered.

So the question that matters in practice is not whether the firm's fee carries VAT (it does), but how to treat the outlays a probate matter generates. A payment the firm makes during an estate is a true disbursement (outside the scope of VAT, recharged with no VAT) only if it meets a strict eight-condition test. This guide applies that test to the specific outlays probate throws up, and is written for the probate fee earner, billing clerk, COFA or practice manager who needs to bill an estate correctly. All figures are current at 3 June 2026.

The Eight Conditions: The Disbursement Test

A payment is a disbursement (outside VAT) only if all eight conditions in VAT Notice 700 section 25.1.1 (HMRC manual VTAXPER39000) are met:

  1. You acted as the client's agent when you paid the third party.
  2. The client actually received and used the goods or services.
  3. The client was responsible for paying the third party.
  4. The client authorised the payment.
  5. The client knew the goods or services would be provided by a third party.
  6. The outlay is separately itemised on your invoice.
  7. You recover only the exact amount paid to the third party.
  8. The goods or services are clearly additional to your own supply.

Fail any single condition and the payment is part of the firm's standard-rated supply, so VAT is added on the recharge. In a probate matter, the client for these purposes is the personal representative or the estate. For the general treatment across matter types, see the VAT treatment of disbursements for UK law firms; this page applies the same test to estate administration.

The Probate Application (Grant) Fee: A Clean Disbursement

The probate registry application fee is a statutory court fee the estate is liable for, paid by the firm as a pure conduit on the personal representatives' behalf. It satisfies the eight conditions comfortably and is a genuine disbursement, recharged at the exact amount with no VAT.

As at 3 June 2026, gov.uk gives the application fee as £300 where the estate is over £5,000, and no fee where the estate is £5,000 or less. Office copies (additional copies of the grant, which the firm typically needs to deal with multiple asset holders at once) are £16 each and are likewise a clean disbursement. Court and tribunal fees generally fall the same way. Always check the current gov.uk figure at the date of the application, because court fees are revised from time to time.

s.27 Trustee Act 1925 Statutory Advertisements

This is the probate-specific outlay. Before distributing, personal representatives place statutory notices under s.27 of the Trustee Act 1925 to protect themselves against unknown creditors and claimants. Section 27 lets them give notice by advertisement in the Gazette (and, where land is involved, in a newspaper circulating in the district in which the land is situated) of their intention to distribute, requiring any person interested to send particulars of their claim within the time fixed in the notice (not less than two months). After the deadline, the personal representatives may distribute having regard only to the claims of which they then had notice.

Where the firm pays the Gazette and the newspaper for these notices as agent for the personal representatives, itemises the exact cost and meets the eight conditions, the advertising cost is a genuine disbursement, recharged at cost with no VAT. The crucial caution is condition seven: the notice cost is the third party's charge to the estate, so the firm recovers exactly that amount. The moment the firm adds its own margin, the payment ceases to be a disbursement and the whole recharge becomes standard-rated.

Other Estate Outlays: Disbursement or Recharge?

Running the common probate outlays against the test gives two lists.

Genuine disbursements (where the firm is a pure conduit, the estate is liable, and the cost is itemised at the exact amount):

  • The probate application fee and office copies (above).
  • Land Registry registration fees on an assent or transfer of the deceased's property.
  • Other statutory and court fees the estate is liable for.
  • Inheritance tax paid to HMRC, which is not a supply at all (a tax the estate owes, not the firm's income).
  • Bankruptcy or insolvency search fees obtained for the personal representatives' protection where passed through unused.

Standard-rated recharges (where the supply is really to the firm, or the firm uses the result in its own advice):

  • The firm's own bank, CHAPS or telegraphic-transfer fees (the bank supplies the firm, not the estate).
  • Photocopying, postage, courier and identity-verification costs.
  • Any valuation or asset search the firm commissions and then interprets in its own advice (the Brabners principle, below).

For the line between the two in a related context, see disbursements versus recharges in conveyancing VAT.

The Brabners Principle Applied to Probate

Whether a third-party report is a disbursement turns on how the firm uses it, not on how it was obtained. In Brabners LLP v HMRC [2017] UKFTT 0666 (TC), the Tribunal held that electronic property search fees, where the firm used the results as part and parcel of its own service (interpreting them, reporting and advising), were not disbursements: they were a cost component of the firm's standard-rated supply, so VAT was due. The same functional test applies to probate. If the firm interprets a valuation, a financial-asset search or a missing-beneficiary report and folds it into its advice to the personal representatives, that cost is part of the firm's taxable supply and VAT applies. If the raw result is passed to the personal representatives unused and the eight conditions are met, it can be a disbursement.

Note also that the informal 1991 postal-search concession was withdrawn from 1 December 2020 by Revenue and Customs Brief 6 (2020), so the old distinction between postal and electronic searches no longer decides the question; the functional use test does. For the wider VAT picture on legal services, see VAT on legal services.

Genealogist, Heir-Tracing and Missing-Beneficiary Costs

A probate edge case worth treating on its own is the heir-hunter or genealogist instructed to trace beneficiaries on an intestacy or where the will's beneficiaries cannot be found. The analysis follows agency and use. If the firm instructs the genealogist and then uses the report in its own advice on who is entitled and how to distribute, treat the cost as a standard-rated recharge. If the personal representatives instruct the genealogist directly, or the firm pays purely as agent and passes the report through unused, it may be a disbursement, provided the eight conditions are met.

The practical control is documentation: record who instructed the third party, in whose name, on whose authority, and how the result was used. That evidence is what supports the VAT treatment if HMRC asks.

Itemising the Estate Bill Correctly

Present the estate bill so the VAT treatment is defensible on its face, in three buckets:

  • The firm's professional fee, with 20% VAT added and shown separately.
  • Genuine disbursements, each itemised at the exact amount with no VAT (the £300 probate fee, the £16 office copies, the Gazette and newspaper s.27 notice costs, the Land Registry assent fee).
  • Standard-rated recharges, with 20% VAT added (the firm's CHAPS fees on distributions, its copying and postage, its identity checks).

Keep evidence for each disbursement: the agency relationship, the estate's liability for the cost, the authorisation and the exact amount. The SRA Transparency Rules separately require clear costs information on probate, so a well-structured bill serves both the VAT and the transparency obligations. For VAT-registration mechanics, see VAT registration for solicitors, and for the broader framework the solicitor VAT accounting guide.

Why the Eight Conditions Matter on Each Estate Outlay

It is tempting to treat the eight conditions as a formality and to wave through anything that looks like a third-party cost. The conditions are not a formality; they are the test HMRC applies, and each one defeats a different mischaracterisation. Conditions one, three and five (agency, the client's liability and the client's knowledge of the third party) ask whether the cost was really the estate's to bear, paid by the firm on the estate's behalf, rather than a cost of the firm's own service. Condition two (the client received and used the goods or services) is where Brabners bites: a report the firm consumes in its own advice was not really used by the client. Condition seven (only the exact amount) defeats any mark-up. Conditions six and eight (separate itemisation and clearly additional to the firm's supply) are the presentation tests that make the treatment visible and defensible on the bill.

Run any estate outlay through all eight before deciding. The probate fee, office copies, the s.27 notices and the Land Registry assent fee pass on every limb when handled as a pure conduit. The firm's CHAPS fee fails at condition one and three (the bank's supply is to the firm, the firm is liable to its bank). A valuation the firm interprets fails at condition two. That single discipline (eight conditions, every outlay) is what keeps an estate bill defensible.

The Registration Threshold and Probate-Only Practices

A small or specialist probate practice sometimes sits below the VAT registration threshold, and the threshold question is worth getting right because it changes the whole bill. From 1 April 2024 the registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover and the deregistration threshold is £88,000 (do not use the old £85,000 figure). The test is forward as well as backward looking: a firm must register if its taxable turnover in the last twelve months has exceeded £90,000, or if it expects to exceed it in the next thirty days alone.

An unregistered firm does not add VAT to its probate fee, but it also cannot recover input VAT on its own costs, and it must still pass through genuine disbursements at cost. Estate-administration fees can be substantial, and a growing probate caseload can push a previously unregistered practice over the threshold quickly, so monitor turnover on a rolling basis. Once registered, the firm's fee becomes standard-rated and the disbursement-versus-recharge discipline in this guide applies in full. For the mechanics of registering and the timing, see do UK solicitors charge VAT.

Interaction With the Estate's Client Account

The firm pays these outlays either from estate client money (where it holds estate funds and the purpose for which the money is held is met) or from office account, recharging on the bill. Inheritance tax and the probate fee are typically paid from estate funds in the client account, while the firm's professional fee transfers to office account only after a bill is delivered. The client-account mechanics of an estate (one ledger per estate, the Rule 3.3 banking-facility prohibition, distribution and closing to nil) are covered in our companion guide to estate administration money and the SRA client account.

Multiple Estates, Estate Accounts and the VAT Return

A probate practice rarely handles one estate at a time, and the VAT discipline has to scale across a caseload without the firm having to think it through afresh on every bill. The way to achieve that is to standardise the firm's classification of its common outlays once, then apply it consistently. Build a short internal schedule that lists the recurring estate outlays (probate fee, office copies, s.27 Gazette and newspaper notices, Land Registry assent fees, bankruptcy searches, CHAPS fees, copying, postage, identity checks, valuations and genealogist reports) and records, for each, whether it is a clean disbursement, a standard-rated recharge, or it depends on use (the Brabners category). That schedule keeps every fee earner and the billing team aligned and reduces the risk of a one-off misclassification slipping through.

On the VAT return itself, the firm accounts for output VAT on its professional fee and on its standard-rated recharges at the tax point (broadly, when it issues a VAT invoice or statute bill, or receives payment, whichever is first), not simply when the estate pays. Genuine disbursements sit outside the VAT figures entirely; they are not the firm's income and they do not enter box 6 as part of the firm's taxable supplies, beyond being shown on the bill as a recharge at cost. Inheritance tax paid for the estate is not a supply at all and never touches the firm's VAT return. Keeping the three buckets distinct on the estate accounts (fee, disbursements, recharges) is what makes the return straightforward and the position auditable.

Common Probate VAT Mistakes

  • Treating the firm's own bank, CHAPS or transfer charges as disbursements when they are standard-rated recharges (the bank supplies the firm).
  • Adding a margin to a disbursement, which breaks condition seven and makes the whole recharge standard-rated.
  • Treating a valuation or search the firm interprets in its advice as VAT-free, contrary to Brabners.
  • Forgetting that the firm's fee is standard-rated even when most of the outlays are not.
  • Failing to itemise disbursements separately, which undermines the eight-condition analysis.

Evidence: What HMRC Expects to See

The disbursement treatment lives or dies on the evidence behind it, so build the file as you bill. For each genuine disbursement, keep the third party's invoice or receipt addressed in a way that supports the estate's liability, a note of the authority on which the firm paid (the personal representatives' instruction to administer the estate and to take the necessary steps), and the bill itself showing the cost itemised separately at the exact amount with no VAT. For the s.27 notices, keep the Gazette and newspaper invoices and the personal representatives' instruction to advertise. For a valuation or search, keep a note of how the result was used, because that is what determines whether it was a disbursement or a recharge under Brabners.

The reason to be disciplined is the assessment risk. If HMRC reviews the firm's treatment and finds standard-rated recharges dressed up as VAT-free disbursements, it can assess the under-declared output VAT for up to four years (longer where behaviour is careless or deliberate), with interest and potentially penalties. Across an active probate caseload, a systematic error (treating every CHAPS fee or every valuation as a disbursement) compounds into a material exposure. A short periodic review of how the firm classifies its common estate outlays is a cheap control against an expensive correction.

Three Worked Examples

The following are illustrative only and not advice.

1. The standard estate bill, correctly split. The firm bills an estate for administering it. The bill shows three buckets: the firm's professional fee, standard-rated at 20%; genuine disbursements at cost with no VAT (the £300 probate application fee, several £16 office copies, the Gazette and local-newspaper s.27 notice costs, the Land Registry assent fee); and standard-rated recharges with 20% VAT (the firm's CHAPS fees on the distributions and its copying and postage). The fee and the recharges carry VAT; the clean disbursements do not.

2. The s.27 advertisement disbursement. The personal representatives ask the firm to place statutory notices to protect them before distributing the residue. The firm pays the Gazette and a local newspaper, itemises each at the exact cost and recharges with no VAT, because it acted as the personal representatives' agent, the cost is clearly additional to its own service, and the eight conditions are met. The firm does not add a margin; if it did, the notices would become a standard-rated recharge.

3. The valuation that is a recharge, not a disbursement. The firm commissions a probate valuation of the deceased's investment portfolio, then interprets it and uses it in advising the personal representatives on the inheritance tax position and the distribution. Because the firm uses the result in its own advice, the valuation is a cost component of the firm's standard-rated supply, so VAT applies on the recharge. If you interpret it in your advice, it is part of your taxable supply.

Speak to a Specialist

Probate billing is where the disbursement-versus-supply line is easiest to get wrong, and the cost of misclassifying recharges as VAT-free disbursements compounds across a caseload. If your firm would value a review of how it treats its common estate outlays (the probate fee, s.27 notices, valuations, searches and bank charges) against HMRC's eight conditions and the Brabners principle, our team works with private-client and probate practices on getting estate bills right. Speak to a specialist who handles both the VAT and the SRA side of estate money.