This disclosure describes techniques for coding of refinement coefficients of an enhancement layer in a scalable video coding (SVC) scheme. According to this disclosure, a method may comprise evaluating a history of transform coefficient values associated with one or more previous layers of the SVC scheme, and estimating one or more refinement coefficient values associated with a current layer of the SVC scheme based on the history. On the encoding side, the coding process may include excluding information for one or more refinement coefficient values from the bitstream and signaling to the decoder that such information is excluded from the bitstream. On the decoding side, coding process include parsing the bitstream to identify information that signals to the decoder that information is excluded from the bitstream, and generating such information based on the history associated with one or more previous layers of the SVC scheme.