Do I need to pay Gift tax if I gifted someone more than $14,000 in a financial year?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 1, 2019
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In 2015 I gifted $30,000 to my brother who lives in India. I didn’t report this. Am I supposed to report this to the IRS?

I read the following in TurboTax forum:

The law completely ignores gifts of up to $14,000 per person, per year, that you give to any number of individuals.

Based on this, I owe IRS gift tax, but the following verbiage confused me:

In addition to the annual gift amount, your can give a total of up to $5.43 million starting in 2015 in your lifetime before you start owing the gift tax.

So if I am reading it right, I don’t owe any gift tax until $5.4 million cap is reached.

Best answer by DoninGA

Correct. You will not owe a gift tax unless your lifetime giving exceeds $5.43 million. However, if your gift to an individual during the the year exceeds $14,000 you have to report the gift by filing a gift tax return, Form 709.

IRS Form 709 - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f709.pdf

IRS Form 709 instructions - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf