A small UK inheritance

[Throwaway555]

Hi all,

Theres a goodly few questions on here about inheriting from the UK. So here's another one! My godmother has recently died in the UK. She is UK based for her entire life and I'm fully based in Ireland.

She died a healthy 90 years of age and in her (extremely old) will gives me £5000. Its at probate stage, basically. Now, I know that in the UK inheritance tax will be paid on the Estate, whereas in Ireland it will be paid by the recipient. I also know there is a double taxation agreement in place, and that the UK tax paid offsets that to be paid on the Irish side. But it is ONLY 5k.

The advice always seems to be "get a solicitor who specialises in this" involved. But it is ONLY 5k. A solicitor will cost 1/4 to 1/2 of that and I'm under any threshold of tax payment that I know of on the Irish side. So, if I were to to the revenue work myself, what do I need to do?

In reality that money will likely just be put into my (entirely legal and properly managed) Ulster Bank NI account and no-one would be any the wiser, but one must keep ones tax affairs up to date and I'd like to know how to do this in this case.

Any advice? Thanks.

 

[DannyBoyD]

I've received similar, relatively small inheritance amounts from the UK & they were just paid directly to me. As the total amount was below the tax bracket in Ireland, I didn't get too worried about it.

IANATE

 

[AAAContributor]

So, if I were to to the revenue work myself, what do I need to do?

Attend to any CAT payment and filing obligations arising.

In this case, the Irish tax payment & filing obligations arising:

- Amount of tax due = None (assuming, like you say, that you have surplus group threshold available - whether that's Group B or C as it's not clear from your post the exact relationship between you and your godmother - and factoring in all other gifts and inheritances within that threshold since 5 Dec 1991).

- Tax filing = Depends. The CAT Return (IT38) is required when the total taxable value of the gifts and inheritances exceeds 80% of the relevant group threshold. This obligation applies even though you may not have a Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT) liability. See here. If, for example, the lowest threshold applies here - Group C €20k - approximately 29% of the threshold has been utilised (assuming a EURGBP of 0.8533 and again assuming we're not factoring other previous Group C gifts or inheritances, and that the death occurred on or after 2 Oct 2024, when the thresholds were recently increased), then the filing threshold has not been reached.