IHT403 Doing My Head In !

Fly_Guy

I am the executor of my mums estate and IHT403 is really doing my head in !
As background, the total value of the estate is approx £800k [a number that includes the £150k of gifts mentioned below]. This includes the house thats coming down to my sister and me, and unused IHT allowances from when Dad died 6 years ago. As such with all the IHT exemptions of £1000k available it means that we do not anticipate an IHT bill.

In the last 3-4 years we think that Mum gave away about £150k to grandchildren, friends, me and my sister and her church [that we know of]. Split between probably hundreds of gifts ! I managed to download the last 12 months of her current account transactions just after she died and before the bank shut the account down down. But she had been 'opted out' of getting paper statements years ago and I have no records of what happened historically and she withdrew and spent a lot of cash. She was very spontaneous and generous and certainly didn't keep track or record her gifts. She lived well, had a good income and certainly didn't scrimp - so a lot of these gifts were just part of her day to day lifestyle. There are lots of very earnest threads here about people documenting their gifts and running Excel macros to sort expense categories etc etc - and thats great for them. But I simply don't have anything like this level of insight !  

Given that we won't need to pay any IHT, the level of detail being requested in IHT403 just seems a bit excessive - and way more than I have. I understand, and take seriously, my duties as an executor, but given the circumstances can I simply put down what I know about and add a comment that this is 'to the best of my knowledge' ? 

Also, at the more prosaic level, is it OK to group recipients and the total of the gifts they got each year on a single line - or does every single gift to every individual need to be individually annotated ?
And does anyone know how I can extend the pdf form to add more pages to section 7 ? Or can I attach a spreadsheet containing all the information I have managed to cobble together and put 'see attached spreadsheet' in section 7 while carrying over the relevant totals ??

And finally, are they REALLY serious in wanting to know about all gifts since the 18th March 1986 ??? Thats 35 years ago ! 

Many thanks in advance....  

Keep_pedalling

You do need to make a best effort at accuracy of gifts. If you speak to the bereavement dept at her bank they can provide older records for you. You don’t have to worry about gifts to friends unless they exceeded £250 prt person per year, and I would have thought gifts to your siblings and their children should be obtainable from the recipients themselves.

The 1986 thing only applies to gifts with reservation which do not fall out of the estate after 7 years. The most common of these is where someone gives their home away but continues to live in it without paying the market rent.

Linton

As Keep-pedaling says the bank will be able to provide a full set of bank statements for the required 7 years.  I suggest you look through it for large round numbers.

Yes you can give a summary on IHT403 listing the people and the total for each year and say details attached.  That is what I did taking the view the more pages of detail given the less likely HMRC would be to question it.  However there would have been extra IHT to pay if it hadnt been possible to prove  that it all came from income.