Gifting from excess income as a couple

Madeinireland101

My wife and I have a joint accounts and a joint credit card. As well as that we have our own ISA’s which produce some income and we also make small lump sum withdrawals from a SIPP (approx £10k per year but generally for one off spends over the last couple of years - e,g. Daughters wedding, special cruise) By far the largest income we have is from my DB pension (approx £40k). 

Every year we tend to record approx £14k worth of excess income from these sources as a couple. I record expenditure  - generally from bills and joint credit card where the spending can vary quite a lot on lots of things including food, presents, general purchases for the house, meals, petrol, etc etc.

i know our general excess as a couple but how do I go about making gifts out of excess income from me or my wife or jointly?  I presume HMRC will want it to be on an individual basis - so many things on our bills could be attributed either way - I could easily spend very little and declare most of the spend as my wife’s meaning I could give a heap

Do I just allocate it all 50/50 no matter what? This would mean my wife has very little income and lot of spend - so does that make it OK for me to say the gifts are from me? or Is income (even though majority is from my db pension) also then split 50/50?

Thanks…

OldBeanz

There has not been much discussion on this subject on here but I would have thought you could have 'your' groceries delivered to your daughter every week; have 'your' Amazon 'stuff' delivered there; both because you are never available; buying fuel for their car; giving them £100 every time you see them; could easily 'lose' the sums you are talking about or more every year. I doubt HMRC are diving that deep into people's lives unless they think they can find £x0,000's of tax but would like to hear if it is otherwise.

jaypers

I’ve been doing some reading on this subject too and found this which I thought was a very good summary -
https://www.mercerhole.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bn_Gifts-out-of-income.pdf

Madeinireland101

Thanks for everyone’s comments so far. Sadly they don’t seem to address the basic issue of doing this as a couple. I suppose in the absence of any guidance on that I will just have to try and partition the income and expenditure appropriately - but I worry that whatever I do may get challenged after I’m gone and it’s hard having an argument when you’re dead 😀 e.g. My wife may have £5k income a year and spend £15k with me having £40k income and spending £15k. Obviously I’ve given my wife £10k out of my income to cover her expenses leaving me a further £15k to gift - Does that seem like a reasonable approach that would be accepted by HMRC - assuming the figures fell with that spilt - or would they say I’ve broken some basic rule with that calculation? - Thanks 😀