Giving lump sump to son abroad to help with buying a house

Aineyoung

Registered User
Messages
15
Hi All.
I think its a complicated area..I want to give my son 50 000e towards buying thier first house .They live in the UK,snd wont be moving back .I'm here in ireland.
I know you can gift tax free sums of 3,000 to a Son and Grandson...but they need s house now..grandson is 3 years old..

But im not sure what the tax implications on future inheritance are if I were to give him a lump sum?..plus also best way to transfer euro to sterling. Alas he has let his irish bank account lapse over the years.. And was told he'd have to give proof of residence etc to reactivate.

Any and all guidance is much appreciated.
 
Your son can receive € 400,000 tax-free from his parents. Anything above that is taxed at 33% - it doesn't matter if he lives in the UK, as you are resident in Ireland.

If you give him € 50,000 now, then he will only be able to receive another € 350,000 tax free

Just arrange a bank transfer - there will be fees to be paid. You could save a small amount using some non-bank services but is it worth it?
 
I can't help with the tax aspect I'm afraid.
On the FX probably your best bet is Revolut. I have a premium Revolut A/C which costs £7.99 per month (my Revolut account is UK from when I lived there). They charge me c. 12 "pips" to do EURGBP for amounts of c. 10k and upwards. This means that if the market rate for EURGBP is 0.8670 (i.e. for each EUR you could buy 86.7 pence) they would quote 0.8658. So for €50k at the market rate you would get £43,350 and at the Revolut rate £43,290, so it costs £60 (plus the monthly fee, but you can revert to a free tier Revolut after you have done the FX).
A couple of things to be aware of:
1. Revolut will likely look for some proof of where the funds came from before they will allow you to send an outgoing payment.
2. Also they may restrict how much you can send out of the account in one payment so you may have to split it.

You should check the commercials etc. with Revolut as I am basing it on the terms I have, but I believe they are standard for that "Tier".

If Revolut doesn't work for you, check Wise, it is likely a little more expensive but there may be more help with the admin. etc.

I would avoid the domestic Irish Banks unless you have some leverage in the sense of doing substantial amounts of other business with them or having a lot of funds on deposit or with their wealth management function. Even then you would need to work hard to get anything close to a market rate.
The link will show you the current market rate for EURGBP: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EURGBP%3DX/

I hope this is of some help.
 
On the FX probably your best bet is Revolut.

Not for a large amount of money. If anything goes wrong, you won't be able to resolve it.

Currency Fair seems to be the preferred option

 
In response to jpd below is the quote from BOI website to buy and send £43,290 just now.
  • 43,290.00 GBP = 50,947.33 EUR
    At an exchange rate of 0.8497

not for me to say what it is worth for ease/perceived safety but the difference is €947
 
Brendan Burgess,
Apologies I can't reply directly to messages for some reason. I checked Currencyfair just now and the cost of £43,290 was €50,206 so it looks considerably better than the Irish banks but not as good as Revolut. If the admin is easier and the error handling better I guess it may be worth paying the extra. I think for anyone reasonably IT literate who has regular FX to do, Revolut remains the best option (albeit not as good as some years ago when they did FX for "free").
 
Your son can receive € 400,000 tax-free from his parents. Anything above that is taxed at 33% - it doesn't matter if he lives in the UK, as you are resident in Ireland.
Is this really true?
I would have thought that the UK tax authorities may have their own view on what income is taxable for UK residents (i.e. the son).