Japanese spouse and I are going to purchase a manshion in the next few months. She doesn't work at the moment and is going to contribute 15m as part of the down payment. That's all for her part in terms of financial. No monthly contribution. The loan and property ownership (were) going to be in my name.
Our agent advised us 2 solutions:
1) Both me and wife transfer separately from our own accounts. Wife transfer 15m to the agent. I transfer the rests (including loan amount received from the bank). 2 names ownership. No gift tax.
2) Wife transfer 15m to my account. I transfer everything to the agent. 1 name ownership. Gift tax applies.
We were totally clueless anything about taxes. At first we thought it'd be as simple as (option 2) which is to transfer 15m to my account, but then our agent started explaining about whether we want to put both our names in the ownership (option 1) because she overheard us discussing about our money preparation flow. Just by then we learned about Gift Tax.
Then our agent also continued to explain about there is no merit of having 2 names ownership other than "just for the sake of having your name in it", and for simplicity sake advising us for 1 name ownership. But now we learned that the Gift Tax of 15m is around 4.5m.
It's true that we prefer 1 name ownership if there is even any other way for simplicity sake, but if the 4.5m tax is true, I think we now have to consider 2 names ownership since 4.5m is not a small amount for us to ignore as per advised by our agent.
Question: Am I understanding the entire situation correctly? Gift tax applies for this case?
by Tasty_Oven7750