@VeryHappy congratulations – sounds like a wonderful event, so warm and lovely!
Congratulations. Very nice.
@VeryHappy sounds terrific!
@VeryHappy You sound so very happy. Sweet. Congrats.
The wedding sounds amazing @VeryHappy. Congratulations!
Oops, post 7723 above was not meant for this thread, sorry.
@VeryHappy, Congratulations. Such a nice wedding!
We have made reservations at a hotel which is literally one block away from DS’s and FDIL’s wedding venue. This is because we do not plan to drive in that city (Boston.) We heard that the area near Boston Common is very walkable toward the end of April.
We have just deposited the second batch of “our share” of expenses to DS’s bank account. We still “owe” them the third/last batch.
In your experience, when did you start to incur most of the expenses for your loved one’s wedding?
Did any of you have to file IRS Form 709 if your wedding expenses exceeds the annual gift tax exclusion amount?
https://www.irs.com/articles/7-things-you-should-know-about-gift-tax
One reason why we gave DS money in batches is that we split the gifts in two tax years in order to avoiding filling out this IRS form.
@1214mom guess it got moved or deleted…post 7723 from you…
Each parent can give the child $15k per year, and if you trust them, also give $15k each to the spouse to be. That’s a lot of money. You can also pay some of the expenses directly if you are also hosting the reception and inviting your friends and relatives.
We hosted the wedding party…didn’t give money to the bride and groom to do so. All bills came to us. No gift tax…do people pay gift tax on parties they throw??
In terms of expenses and when…
Reception 1/2 paid for 6 months prior, fully paid for 4 weeks prior.
Band fully paid for 6 months prior.
Flowers paid for two weeks before reception but 1/2 put down about 4 months before.
Photographer…1/2 down when booked 18 months prior. Paid in full 1 month prior.
Boston Common area is lovely in April…temps can be chilly…or warm. It’s very nice walking around there.
Thanks for sharing your experience and very useful information.
It is the young couple themselves who host the party - the majority of the guests are theirs. So it is natural for them to host the party. I think they chose that venue mostly because it is close to their work location which is likely less than 10 blocks north of the venue.
We did not know a lot of expenses will be paid in advance.
This is what I found out about the gift tax and wedding expenses from the Internet， which is similar to what twoinanddone has posted. On another site, it is said that if the parents host the wedding party, IRS will most likely not go after the parents.
“For example, the tax-exempt gift amount for 2018 is $15,000 per year per recipient for each gift giver (for example, mom and dad). Shutt explains that this means if both parents give their daughter $15,000 and their new son-in-law $15,000, that’s $30,000 per spouse per parent, or $60,000 total that they can gift before they’d need to file a gift tax return and pay taxes. “Since the average length of an engagement in the U.S. today is around 15 months, for families that really plan ahead and are extremely generous, they can take advantage of gifting up to the limit in the first year of engagement, and again in the second calendar year before the wedding, and still fall below the threshold for needing to file a gift tax return,” she adds.”
If you are paying over $60k toward the wedding, I’d say you are hosting. I think the IRS only cares if you try to write off the wedding as a business expense. There is actually a ‘note’ in the regs about it so I think it happened more than once.
This is not a problem I’m going to have. My kids really will be hosting their own weddings and will pay for them themselves. One D is going to marry someone who seems to be related to most of NJ so they are thinking of a destination wedding. We have no relatives to invite so the venue would be very lopsided with 6 people on our side and 600 on his.
We are not paying $60k toward the wedding. We are not sure whether they will even spend that much.
We just try to find out whether we need to file the IRS tax form 709 when we file our tax return for the 2018 tax year. What we financially supported him last year and the two months this year is not only for the wedding, but also for his student loans (actually, more for the latter. He is deep in his student loan indebtness.) It turns out we indeed need to file the tax form 709 in the 2018 tax year, even before we had sent him the money for their upcoming wedding.
Our own parents were unable to help with our wedding when we were young. Now we are more capable than our previous generation to do so for our offspring so we are glad to do so.
It is more about helping him and her to start their adult lives than about the wedding. Like Osborne in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel “Wives and daughters” said to his father, the Squire: “I need some seed money to jump-start my career.” (Some statement like this which I may not recall exactly.)
Our venue could also be very lopsided. What will likely happen is: 2 people from groom’s family, 4 to 8 (?) people from bride’s family, and all the rest from the couple’s acquaintances in their city. Parents/family from both sides will fly in from far away. The bride’s parents and the groom’s parents will meet for the first time during rehearsal which is one day before the reception/wedding day.
When is this wedding and how much did you gift him n 2018? How much will it be in 2019? And don’t confuse the core gift tax law with the number of exclusions that exist.
Separate from whether you paid toward his college loans in a tax year: if you pay for a party (wedding,) it can be your name on the contract and your check to the venue or a service provider. I.e., Your party for your daughter, the couple. It’s not about whose guests dominate. Calling the couple the “hosts” is just your view (they aren’t paying the bulk of it, right?) And you aren’t planning to go over the 60k couples gift max in one tax year, right?
And your own link says, “doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to pay tax on it right away. Instead, you can apply the gift towards your lifetime exclusion from the Federal Estate Tax.” So this doesn’t necessarily add to your present costs.
“Gift-givers face a tax burden only in very specific circumstances. There is no tax on gifts valued up to the annual exclusion for the calendar year – $15,000 from an individual in 2018, or $30,000 from a married couple. Technically, a married couple could give you a wedding gift valued at up to $30,000 and give your new spouse an additional $30,000 gift and still not be subject to a gift tax. In the case of larger gifts, the giver may be required to fill out Form 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return. Still, unless the gift pushes the giver over his lifetime estate and gift tax exclusion – $11.18 million as of 2018 – even a very large wedding gift won’t be taxed.”
Or this https://blog.sfgate.com/pender/2013/05/30/is-an-expensive-wedding-subject-to-gift-tax/ It’s from a few years ago and reflects the lower cap. But you get the point.
If you have large assets, it’s worth it to consult a cpa.
@BelknapPoint could you please explain the gift tax…and especially the “pay taxes” part to this poster.
@westparent123 IIRC correctly…you would need to be gifting a HUGE amount in your lifetime to actually pay taxes…HUGE like millions.
@VeryHappy - sounds like a wonderful, memorable time!
No one is paying taxes on 60K, you only need to file it with IRS.
Over your life time you are allowed to leave 11 mill to each of your child (how many people will do that?!). Whenever you give more than 15K to them you are supposed to let IRS know, so they could keep tract of how much you have given over your life time. As long as you do not give more than 11 mill then you are fine.
“Over your life time you are allowed to leave 11 mill to each of your child (how many people will do that?!).”
It is $11M total, to all heirs (spouse excluded).