David Cameron has issued a strong hint that he will raise the threshold for inheritance tax for married couples to £1 million in 2015.

The prime minister has stated his intention to raise the threshold – thereby cutting tax owed – previously, and yesterday he told an audience at an Age UK event “inheritance tax…should be paid by the very wealthy”.

The inheritance tax threshold currently stands at £325,000, rising to £650,000 for married couples. Above this amount inheritance is taxed at 40%. A cut would knock about £3 billion of the public tax bill.

Mr Cameron said: "You see someone who has worked hard, they have put money into their house and they want to leave it to their children and they don’t feel that they are in any way the mega-rich, and they feel: ‘I should be able to do that without having 40 per cent of it knocked off.'"

The tax cut was originally included in the Conservative Party manifesto ahead of the 2010 general election but was dropped after it entered coalition government.

Chancellor George Osborne has one more budget before the next general election in 2015 and may be tempted to announce vote-grabbing tax incentives for voters.