Yes, for 3 to 10 years after you leave
Moving to Malta does not take you out of UK inheritance tax. Since 6 April 2025 the test is residence, not domicile: if you were UK tax resident in at least 10 of the 20 tax years before a death or gift, you are a long-term UK resident and your whole worldwide estate, Maltese home included, sits within the 40% charge above the £325,000 nil-rate band. Leaving starts a tail rather than ending it. Resident in 10 to 13 of the last 20 years and you stay in scope for 3 tax years after you go; each further year of residence adds a year, so someone resident in all 20 stays in for 10. Only 10 consecutive years of non-residence resets the count. The ladder is in our residence-based IHT guide, and the IHT tail calculator works out your own end date.
UK assets, and UK pensions, stay chargeable for good
Once the tail ends HMRC treats you as based abroad and charges only your UK assets, such as UK property and UK bank accounts; shares count as UK assets where the register that records your title is kept in the UK. A leaver who keeps a London flat, a sterling current account and a UK share portfolio has therefore escaped nothing on those, however long they have lived in Malta. The pension is the newer trap. For deaths on or after 6 April 2027 most unused pension funds are counted in the estate, and HMRC's technical note confirms that a scheme established in the UK, which is what a SIPP or UK personal pension is, stays in scope for someone who is no longer a long-term UK resident; only schemes established outside the UK fall away. We cover the options in UK pensions and inheritance tax when you live abroad.
The trap for Malta couples: the capped spouse exemption
Malta couples are often mixed: one spouse still inside the tail and the other never a long-term UK resident, or a British leaver married to someone who never lived in the UK. Where a long-term UK resident leaves assets to a spouse or civil partner who is not one, the spouse exemption is not unlimited. It is limited to the nil-rate band, £325,000, and earlier lifetime gifts to that spouse use it up first. The receiving spouse can elect to be treated as a long-term UK resident to restore the full exemption, but the election cannot be revoked and only lapses after 10 consecutive tax years of non-UK residence, during which their own worldwide estate is inside UK scope. Our guide to the inheritance tax foreign spouse exemption explains when the election pays and when it costs more than it saves.
What Horizon does for leavers in Malta
Malta has no inheritance tax of its own, so there is no Maltese inheritance tax to credit against the UK one. The UK bill is due by the end of the sixth month after death, and a payment towards it is usually needed before probate. The work is a leaver IHT review: fixing the date your tail ends from your year-by-year residence record, listing which assets stay chargeable after it, testing whether a spouse election helps or harms, and deciding what to do about the pension before April 2027. It is advisory work from £550, agreed as a single total before anything starts, never by the hour. Start with the IHT tail calculator, then book a free clarity call. The wider move, including Malta's remittance basis, is in our Malta tax guide and in Do I pay UK tax if I move to Malta?.