A person's lifetime gifts are exempt up to a total of
£3,000 in an income tax year - 6 April to 5 April the
following year.
The exemption applies to
IHTA84/S19 (5) disapplies IHTA84/S3 (4) in the case of the
annual exemption, so any “deemed” transfer of value (as
opposed to an actual transfer of value) such as those under
IHTA84/S102 (4) and FA86/S103 (5), cannot benefit from the
exemption.
However, this limitation does not apply to the deemed
transfers under IHTA84/S52 (termination of an interest in
possession) or IHTA84/S94 (transfers by close companies).
If a gift (or technically, transfer of value ( IHTM04024)) is more than the amount of the available exemption:
You can assume the annual exemption is available as claimed, or
unavailable if not claimed, unless there is some positive
indication to the contrary.
This is a common area for arithmetic and application error
however. You must check any computation provided by the taxpayer,
including whether the roll-over provisions (
IHTM14144) have been correctly
applied.