Even if you have to pay tax on it it's considerably less than the sum they'd be paying off, no?

sounds like the start to a helluva Bruce Willis movie...

@dizmoYeah, it would be a lot less, but the question is just whether or not we can afford to shill out that much money at once.

As far as I can tell we would have to pay 12% of the gift's value as a gift tax, and I'm not too sure we can afford that right now.

You can't pay the taxes you owe in installments? I imagine that's something you wouldn't have to deal with until tax time, no?

Installments are unfortunately a no-go. You have pay it all at once.

While we could postpone the payment until May 1st, that would still mean we would have get the funds by then.

The only way it's really feasible is to save as much money until that time and then take out a loan for the rest. But that kinda renders the whole exercise meaningless. Especially since the new loan would have a much higher interest rate.

You factored in the $30k you can take off of the taxable amount, yes?

That's unfortunately not an option in Denmark. There is a deductible limit of about $10.000, but with the amount we're talking about here that's pretty much nothing.

Do you have friends or family outside of Denmark? Looking at this,

Quote

Gift tax applies if the donee or the donor is resident in Denmark, or if the gift consists of real estate or assets belonging to a permanent establishment in Denmark. Gifts between spouses are tax exempt.

It doesn't seem as comprehensive as the one in the US, which takes foreigners into account. It might not be complete, but worth looking into. If the funds could simply be transferred out of country and then to you, it'd be a nice loop hole.

Well, my in-laws live in Russia, but it's unfortunately not really a loophole. Both my wife and I are residents in Denmark and we don't plan on moving anywhere. So the gift would still be donated to a Danish resident and therefor be taxed under Danish law.

Funneling the money through a foreign agent would be considered tax fraud, which would land my ass in jail.

The way this work it would also fall under the "assets" category, since my in-laws are essentially buying the debt from our bank and then forgiving it.