Gifting To Adult Children

We have 2 sons aged 21 and 22.
Husband will retire next year and get €100k cash and reasonable pension.
Mortgage is paid off. New car, no loans and have savings.
Ideally would like to gift each son around €30k to go towards a property deposit. (When they are 25).

I read we can gift €3k per child per year tax free.
What is the best way to do this? Can he simply transfer €30k into their account or does he need to transfer €6kpa (3k from me/3k from him)
Thank you

As well as the annual Small Gift Exemption of 3k, children also have a separate lifetime allowance free of CAT of 335k currently.

Does the annual €3k have to be paid annually, or can we gift €30k in a lump sum?

(Our house will be theirs in years to come and will be around the 335k threshold)

ETA thank you for replying

If a person receives 30k from parent this year, 3k is allocated to the Small Gift Exemption, and the next 27k uses up some of the lifetime CAT allowance.

Nodrog2007 said:

Does the annual €3k have to be paid annually, or can we gift €30k in a lump sum?

Click to expand...

No. €3,000 from him and €3,000 from you annually.

This article from this thread will confirm why you can't gift the whole sum in one go.

The Revenue rules and regulations here or Citizens Information here.

Thanks very much.
Another question, sorry!
My eldest has a DD into my credit union account monthly (basically his financial contribution to our home).
Can we *give* him €30K by saying the €30k is actually *his savings* without impacting the lifetime CAT allowance?

You shouldn't really mess around like that.
You are just asking for trouble.

The €400k CAT exemption is generous enough

No, the money he pays you as a contribution to the household expenses is yours, not his.

He will not have to pay tax if you gift him € 30,000 but it will count towards the € 400,000 lifetime allowance

You can gift € 6,000 a year tax-free for five years

Of course, he is free to do whatever he likes with the gift - spend it, save it or give it to someone else

Thanks very much, appreciate your help and advice

I think its clear above but they are 21 and 22 now and you want to pay at 25 so defo start giving them 6k per year now tax free.

Depending on when they want to purchase you can then make up the balance at the time. I really wouldn't worry about using 10k out of the currently 400k each CAT free allowance at this stage of your life and their life. Hopefully its another 20 years of your life ahead before that's even an issue and by then it will have been largely inflated away - the allowance by then should be closer to 800k than 400 even if the system isn't changed altogether. And by they will have nearly paid their own mortgage off and the risk of 3K of inheritance tax is irrelevant.

If he's good with money then you could sort it by him moving his current payment into your account each month and setting up equivalent savings in his own name - 3 years of that will get you close to the amount needed.