Annual gift Allowance

p00hsticks

Unfortunately although generally well organised, my late father didn't explicitly leave documentation for the gifts he made so I've had to plough through seven years of bank statements. 

Before I start to put together the probate form, I'd appreciate some confirmation on a couple of points. 

Firstly, if the money has come from a joint account (and there are no other accounts for either holder) I can treat half the money as coming from the surviving partner and so need only concern myself if the total in any one tax year exceeds £6000.   

Secondly, when getting to that total am I able to ignore any gifts made to registered charities ?

Thanks in advance for your responses 

Keep_pedalling

You can ignore the charity donations. Was the joint account with your mother? If not was his partner in the habit of making gifts to his family? 

p00hsticks

Yes the joint account was with my mother, and I believe she was mainly aware of the gifts (and in some cases may even have instigated them). Many of them were to my brother (their son) who was on a low wage and fell sick - things like paying his car tax for him or just giving him outright gifts of money to help with bills I think. 

Keep_pedalling

I think it fairly safe to treat those as joint jiffy’s.

probate_slave

Actually, to my surprise HMRC do now ask for charity gifts to be listed on IHT403. Have a look at the latest version. The only gifts they don't want to know about are those covered by the £3,000 annual exemption and the small gifts exemption (which could of course include gifts under £250 to a charity in a single year).