regular gifts out of surplus income

[Bouleversee]

Apologies for not coming back on this sooner. Other urgent matters intervened and had to be dealt with. I have got as far as printing out the HMRC documents, no easy task when it takes side trips all the time, and I did read all your additional comments as they came in. I am going to read it all for the umpteenth time before I post again. I don't pay a fixed monthly sum and am beginning to think life would be simpler if I just stuck with PETs and faced up to the fact that there will be a fair bit of IHT to pay. Any saving would probably not be worth the time and effort of keeping detailed records of my expenditure and income but I'll give it another look and do my tax return calculations for last year and get a rough idea of my expenditure and see where to go from there.

[taken2often]

A bit late to the discussion. As mentioned income becomes capital, one year two years. As I have probably invested it after one year. It will be capital.
If you feel that your estate will be subject to IHT I strongly recommend the following, keep a weekly then monthly log of your expenses. If too boring keep credit card and bank statements for each year, but this will not cover expenses using cash.

Next look up form IHT400 and look for the work sheets relating to gifts and the income and expense sheet. You will have to write in the ISA income
on a blank line. Fill out one of these sheets and the gift one and keep for 7 years. Replace the oldest with the newest.

These simple rules will save your estate a lot of money. Having this information gives HMRC little room to question your data. And no room for a lawyer to charge for gathering it.

Hope some of this is helpful

[Bouleversee]

Belated thanks taken2often. I have not had time to make much progress in this connection, I'm afraid. There is considerably less in the kitty now to attract IHT thanks to Covid 19 but I still need to find the time to get down to it, not helped by my cleaner telling me she is not coming back as she has decided to retire and the gardener who was on trial turning out to be useless as well as extremely expensive.