Money Gift But Now Gifter Seriously Ill - Tax Implications

chuckalicious_2

Thought I'd just quickly update this.

Op went well and the prognosis is good, so fingers crossed this thread will be redundant!

Thanks again all.

ceeforcat

I hope it is redundant. However, there are two things that I would like to clarify on your opening post. You say:

The total sum has added up to roughly £166,000. They made a similar number of gifts to my brother and his wife.

Does this mean that there was considerably more than £166000 gifted?

Secondly, these gifts appear to be regular. How regular? Were your parents in the habit of giving you all, say, £10000 or more at Christmas, birthdays, children's birthdays etc. If so there could be a case for classing them as regular gifts out of income if there was was no diminishing of your parent's standard of living and, thus, exempt from IHT. Can you shed any light? See below from HMRC website.

Regular gifts or payments that are part of your normal expenditure

Any regular gifts you make out of your after-tax income, not including your capital, are exempt from Inheritance Tax. These gifts will only qualify if you have enough income left after making them to maintain your normal lifestyle.
These include:

• monthly or other regular payments to someone
• regular gifts for Christmas and birthdays, or wedding/civil partnership anniversaries
• regular premiums on a life insurance policy - for you or someone else

chuckalicious_2

These were not made for reasons such as birthdays, or Christmas, although they did seem quite regular for some time, I have to say. They certainly didn't affect my parents standard of living.

As for the amount gifted, I have only quoted what I received. I think they made similar gifts to my brother, so I suppose you could roughly double the figure I quoted.

ceeforcat

That's what I thought and so it could well be that the exempt figure of £325000 could already be exceeded by the gifts alone if all came from your father (although this can be disputed). I take your point that you cannot class the gifts as regular but it was worth exploring.

chuckalicious_2

Fingers crossed things continue the way they have been and this topic will be irrelevant. Nasty cancer op done and chemo underway, but prognosis is good.