scrumpyjack wrote:...
Perhaps one approach would be to put a note about this on the IHT forms saying that these may have been gifts but would in any case qualify for the exemption, and that you do not have available all the records. Leave it to them to pursue if they wish. That way you should be in the clear?
Many thanks for this advice and for all the other replies.
Anyway, I decided to phone the IHT Helpline and the adviser seemed to think it was an unusual quesion. Perhaps it is. After some conferring at the other end, I was advised not to bother imputing a gift value. They seemed to me to be trying to answer a slightly different question, i.e. how should I value my wife's share of the joint current account at death, but my attempts to play devil's advocate didn't yield any change of heart.
That's good enough for me at the moment. I'll declare in 'any other info' that I have considered the issue, phoned the helpline, and consequently not imputed any gift value. It saves me a lot of effort, unless and until someone reads it and they change their mind.
Looking again at the IHT205 Notes (IHT206), I see that the fundamental question of whether to impute a 'gift', regardless of any exemption that might apply, doesn't really depend on marital status at all:
You must start with all gifts and transfers that the
deceased made, even those made to their spouse or
civil partner or to a qualifying charity.
So, to my mind, it seems to be a question that either
all couples with such joint finances and asymmetric incomes, need to consider, or that
none of them do.