£4000 wedding gift from grandmother

PurpleBees

I'm getting married in a couple of months' time and my grandmother gave me and my fianc! a cheque for £4000 to help towards the wedding.

The cheque was in my name, so had to be paid into my bank account, although it was quite clear from the card it came in that she intended it as a gift to both of us.

My question is, do I/we have to pay any tax on this? We are both self-employed so we fill in a tax return every year. But all the info I have so far managed to find online refers to the gift giver paying tax on the gift, rather than the recipient. I've also seen mention of a £3000 limit for cash gifts - if that is the case, could I get out of paying tax on it by just transferring my fianc!'s half of the gift straight into his bank account, therefore we would have received £2000 each as opposed to me receiving £4000, or would it still count as me receiving £4000 because that's the amount that entered my account?

TIA

TonyMMM

There is no tax on gifts - the £3000 figure is connected to inheritance tax exemption and your grandmothers estate. It would only be relevant if she dies within 7 years, and then is an issue for her executor, not you.

You don't need to declare it.

xylophone

https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax/gifts

TheCyclingProgrammer

I feel like we need a sticky in this forum about gifts and tax as it seems to come up on a weekly basis!

00ec25

TheCyclingProgrammer wrote: »

I feel like we need a sticky in this forum about gifts and tax as it seems to come up on a weekly basis!

you are not the first person to make that observation, you won't be the last either since MSE towers have their head in the sand, much like correcting the unicode error for the '

le_loup

Do people read stickies or even search for prior posts? My experience here is that they don't.

Further, it seems to be a societal factor - research, even for the simplest of problems today, seems to be limited to asking a question on the internet!

Keep_pedalling

TonyMMM wrote: »

There is no tax on gifts - the £3000 figure is connected to inheritance tax exemption and your grandmothers estate. It would only be relevant if she dies within 7 years, and then is an issue for her executor, not you.

You don't need to declare it.

The £4000 would be covered by a combination her annual exemption (£3000) and gift in contemplation of marriage allowance (£2500) so the whole lot will fall out of her estate without needing the 7 year rule. She should still keep a record of this for her executor though.

Zygyra

Ohhh why this is not my grandmother&&

kidmugsy

Zygyra wrote: »

Ohhh why this is not my grandmother&&

Because of the capitalist-syndicalist conspiracy, comrade.