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This might not stay at just District Probate Registry fees. What is to stop the government from ordering the Land Registry to charge the earth for registering a transfer? I see no difference between a District Probate Registry fee of £20,000 to issue a grant of representation on top of Inheritance Taxes and a Land Registry fee of £20,000 to register the purchase of a house on top of stamp duty. In fact, applying the kind of specious arguments used to increase District Probate Registry fees there seems to me to be no limit to how high fees can go on a massive number of services provided by both local and central government. Put another way, once the government acquires a taste for increasing fees for services beyond the cost of providing the services in question in effect taxes could go up by a phenomenal amount in this country.