biggusmickus

Hi

My wife and I are dual UK/US citizens. We jointly own a property in the UK. I would be grateful if anyone could advise on the following situation. I am considering gifting her my share of the UK property so that she owns it outright. As I understand it, possibly incorrectly, this spousal gift has no tax implications between US citizens and so she can own the property outright and for the IRS, that is the end of the matter until disposal of the property. If my wife then returns to the UK and at some stage decides to renunciate her citizenship, not being a covered person, do the US tax authorities have any further interest in that property as she is solely a UK citizen, or can she do with it as she pleases, subject of course to UK tax law. I do intend to speak with a professional tax advisor on this but would like to have a feel for where we stand beforehand. Thank you for any help on this matter.

durham_lad

I think that all sounds very reasonable to me. I took my name off all our joint investment accounts and I don’t believe that between spouses there exists any gifts as regards taxes so I didn’t report this to the IRS via gift tax forms. I believe the same applies in the UK, no tax implications with spouses passing property between themselves.

cyrian

In the UK, there are no tax issues on spousal transfers unless the transfer is done with the sole intent of avoiding tax.
We did a spousal transfer before a planned taxable event and we were advised to leave at least 6 months between the transfer and the subsequent taxable event.