Tax on gifts and thresholds

Hello all. I'm hoping you can answer a tax question for me. Fiance and I intend to buy a house. I am on a very low wage at the moment so it may be a case he needs to apply for mortgage on his own and transfer the property into joint names (tax free) when we are married anyway. His parents want to gift him/us 40k.

If we get a mortgage/buy a house in joint names, is this viewed as a) a gift to their son only category A no tax b) a gift to us, 20 k me, category C, taxable or c) a gift from them to him and him to me, still cat C until we are married?

Edit sorry, I forgot about small gift exemption: that's be 3k, him from each parent, 3k me from each, so even if it is look at as me getting a gift, cat 6, 20-6 is 14 which is under the limit. I have no priors in category C. Am I assessing this right??

I think that you are making this too complicated.

1) They gift him the money.
2) He buys the house

When you get married, decide what to do then.

If you need to apply jointly, then his parents give him a gift. What he does with that is of no real intertest to the Revenue.

If you buy a house together with his money, then you should sign an agreement before hand in case you split up. Just look at all the dreadfully difficult cases in this forum:

Issues arising from joint mortgages

Brendan

Brendan

Thanks Brendan. So there is no issue with him putting forward more money than me - is that not a "gift" in a joint tenancy?

Edit: I just saw your bit about the agreement! We are getting married soon, I'm probably getting ahead of myself thinking we'll have the house before then, so either way an agreement wouldn't really matter

There reallly is no reason at all why a married couple or an about to be married couple should not do an agreement on the ownership of the house if one is contributing far more than the other.

Brendan