1
It's part of a settled pattern
Regular gifts, or a clear, dated intention to keep giving — not a one-off payment invented after the fact.
There's a rule that lets you gift surplus income straight out of your estate — no cap, no seven-year wait. The Gifting Kit shows you how to use it properly, with the letters, the pattern, and the records HMRC actually expects.
Inheritance tax is charged at 40% on everything above your threshold. If your income comfortably exceeds what you spend — from a salary, a pension drawdown, dividends, rental properties, savings interest — the surplus doesn't just sit there. It accumulates into savings, and those savings become part of a taxable estate.
Every year you don't do anything about it, the eventual bill gets bigger. For a lot of people this is quietly the single largest tax they'll ever pay, and it lands on their family rather than on them.
Your estate is likely to exceed the inheritance tax threshold, and your income regularly leaves you with money you don't need to spend — whether that's a few hundred a month or several thousand.
For years the standard advice was to leave your pension untouched, because it sat outside your estate. The Finance Act 2026 ended that.
Estates that were never close to the threshold are about to find themselves over it, simply because the pension now counts. If you already had an inheritance tax problem, this makes it bigger.
Section 21 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 lets you gift surplus income with no cap and no seven-year wait — provided you can show three things.
Regular gifts, or a clear, dated intention to keep giving — not a one-off payment invented after the fact.
Salary, pension income, dividends, rent, interest — not savings that have been sitting there for years.
You're left with enough to live on exactly as you did before. This is judged against your own life, not anyone else's.
Miss one of these, and the gift falls back into your estate. Most people who could use this exemption never document it properly — and the claim fails at exactly the moment it matters, after death, when no one can explain it anymore.
Three things, designed to be used together.
Margaret, 74, is divorced, so she has her own allowances only. She has £48,000 a year in income and spends £32,000 living. The remaining £16,000 does nothing but sit there. She gifts £1,300 a month between her two children, backed by standing orders and an annual letter, and her estate is £700,000 — including a home of £450,000 going to them.
£62,400 less tax — and £156,000 already in her children's hands, rather than waiting in an estate for them.
David, 58, is married and earns £110,000 plus around £26,000 a year from two rental properties. After tax and living costs he has roughly £30,000 a year he simply doesn't spend. The couple's estate is already £1.4m, including a £600,000 home going to their children. He gifts £2,000 a month to his daughter and documents it from the outset.
£192,000 less tax — and £480,000 given to his daughter over twenty years, at the point in her life when it was worth most.
Both examples assume allowances stay at today's levels, no investment growth, and that the home passes to direct descendants. They're illustrations of how the rule works, not forecasts. Your own position will differ.
Everything above, as a Word guide, editable letter templates, and a ready-built spreadsheet.
The Gifting Kit reduces what your estate is worth while you're alive. The Executor Kit records what's left, and tells whoever deals with it exactly what to do.
Most of what an executor needs is locked in one person's head — which banks, which pensions, where the will is, whether a late husband or wife's allowances were ever claimed. All of it is easy to answer now and very hard to answer afterwards.
The estate check answers whether an estate will pay inheritance tax, roughly how much, and which allowances apply. The Land Registry form filler fills in the forms needed to transfer a property after a death — DJP, AS1, AP1 and ID1 — from one set of answers. Both are free, and nothing you type into either one leaves your computer.
No. The Gifting Kit is educational information and record-keeping tools to help you use an existing HMRC exemption correctly. It isn't personalised advice. If your income sources are complex, or your estate is large, it's worth speaking to a solicitor or financial adviser alongside using this pack.
Any exemption claim can be reviewed by HMRC — that's normal. The point of this pack is that your executors have a clear, dated, consistent record to show, rather than trying to reconstruct years of finances from memory. That's what makes a challenge straightforward to answer rather than something to fear.
For most straightforward situations, no — this pack is designed to be self-administered. If your income is unusual (trusts, overseas income, business profits) or your estate needs broader planning, a solicitor or adviser is worth involving.
You'll get free updates to the guide and templates if the underlying tax rules change materially.
Yes — a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.
Most people trying to reduce inheritance tax get the idea right and the paperwork wrong — and it's usually their executors who find out, when it's too late to fix.
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