Is it legal to receive/send “gifts” of Non-Trivial Amounts to a “friend”?
"Am I right to say that no tax needs to be given for the annual ~$130k   USD, since they are considered as annual gift tax exclusion? Not only that you're wrong, but it also looks like a tax fraud, not just mere avoidance. You'll have hard time proving to any judge or jury that the gifts are ""in good faith"". By the way, $5 a month is below minimum wage." This is tax fraud, plain and simple. I recently wrote an article The Step Transaction Doctrine, in which I explain that a series of events may each be legal, but aggregate to one transaction and the individual steps are ignored.  In this case, it goes beyond that, by accepting $5/mo you are already outside the tax code. As littleadv noted, you can't work for a legitimate business for free and not expect to have some kind of issue. The $14K/yr gift isn't a bona fide gift, but ties to that work. "In almost all cases, gifts from employers are considered taxable compensation, based on the employer-employee nature of the relationship. Furthermore, cash gifts are always considered to be intended as wages, regardless of how you receive the money. Furthermore, regardless of whether you expect to receive anything in return (such as contractual consideration) or whether the amounts are large enough to be declared as taxable personal gifts, it is likely that the IRS would consider these payments to be ""disguised wages"", as these payments would fail several tests that the IRS uses to determine whether benefits provided by the employer are non-taxable, including: I'd recommend reviewing IRS publication 535 here, as well as publication 15-B here for more on what constitutes taxable wages & benefits. It seems very unlikely to me that you could make a persuasive legal defense in which you claimed to be working full-time for $60.00 per year and just happened to be receiving large personal gifts of $130,000.00. In my opinion it seems much more likely that these payments would be found to be taxable wages for services rendered."
First, you'll need to find a service that can handle transferring that amount of money, whether it's using a bank, or wire transferring service. Any major Wall Street bank (Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, etc.) should be able to handle it. You could also use services such as Western Union. As for your legal and tax obligations, according to Western Union: Individuals in Canada and the U.K. don’t have any tax considerations,   unless international payments are received as income or in the form of   capital gains. Only then must they report it on their income taxes,   says Ilyas Patel, director at Ilyas Patel Chartered Certified   Accountants based in Preston, U.K., and the director of Tax Expert, a   tax advice website. To that end, when considering their tax obligations, individuals   should take care to look into the reporting requirements on foreign   income or gifts ranging up to a certain amount. For example, in the   U.S., the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires individuals who   receive more than $100,000 U.S. dollars from a foreign source to   report it on a Form 3520. “You may not owe taxes on the money, but it   informs the IRS that you received it,” Gragg says, stressing the   importance of consulting with a professional. “They’re looking for   certain terrorist activities and other illegal activity.” Due to the large sum of money your transferring, it would be in your best interest to speak with a banker (maybe even a lawyer or CPA) about this. "You'll have to research the Canada side of things on your own or maybe someone else can answer that side. For the Germany side, there is a gift tax (Schenkungssteuer) which depends on the relationship (Verwandschaftsgrad) of the giver and receiver. steuerklassen.com has an overview here which shows the tax class (Steuerklasse) and tax free amount (Freibetrag). So according to the overview, nieces get 20 000 € tax free amount, anything over 20 000 € within 10 years from the same gift giver will be taxed with tax class 2, which can range from 15% to 43% depending on the gifted amount. The full article is here It also mentiones a few ""tricks"" for example if you want to gift 40 000 € to your niece, you could gift 20 000 € directly and 20 000 € to your brother or sister who then gifts it to their daughter - you'll have to trust them to do that, though, because you can't put that in a contract. Bottom line of this: If you want to gift more than 20 000 €, your niece should contact a tax advisor (Steuerberater).  About the bank transfer: Your niece will have to declare any bank transfers over 12 500 € that she receives. Her bank will know how to do that so she should just ask them. It also might be helpful for her to have a letter from you stating that the money came from you and is a gift, just in case the tax office (Finanzamt) doesn't believe that the money isn't from moonlighing (Schwarzarbeit)." Yes a minor can have a checking account, or a savings account. They can even get a debit card. The money in that bank account belongs to the minor. The account can be established as soon as the are assigned their social security number. If they are a newborn the account is generally set up as a joint account with a parent to facilitate transferring money into the account. For us the money was birthday gifts from relatives.  The IRS allows minors to receive small amounts of interest, or other unearned income, tax free. In 2015 that is up to $1,050, if they have no earned income. When bank rates were higher some parent's wanted to put all their saving under their child's name, of course in the eyes of the law the money belonged to the child and was only to be spent for items that benefited the child. Credit cards are another matter because the CARD act in 2009 required lenders to only give credit to those under 21 who had proof of sufficient income, unless there was a co-signer. You do have to be careful when talking about owning a house as minor. They generally can't sign a contract. You could gift the house to the minor, but if it was time to sell it the courts would insist on appointing a legal guardian to represent the interest of the child. That could add significant time to the transaction. How to send the full loan amount from Saudi Arabia (money exchange), because I have a money transfer limit? There is no limit for sending money into India. Just use the right banking channel and transfer the funds. If I sent to India, what about tax and all that in India? In a financial year if you are outside of India for more than 182 days, you are Non-Resident for tax purposes. Any money you earn outside of India is tax free in India. i.e. there is no tax for this funds in India.   If it is possible to send the money, to whom do I have to send it (my account, or my parents account) Whatever is convenient, preferably to your own NRE/NRO account. Any documents I have to show for tax issues (in case tax) You have to establish that you are NRI and hence this funds are not taxable. Hence its best you transfer into NRE/NRO account. If you transfer to your parents account, you would need a gift deed to make this non-taxable to your parents. I have savings account my self in Axis Bank, for the past 3 years I am paying taxes, if I send to my Axis Bank account how can I withdraw the full amount (10 lakhs (1,000,000)) on single day   Withdrawal is possible by cash or cheque You can write a check, do a NEFT/RTGS transfer to your loan account, you can withdraw cash by giving some notice time to the Branch Manager of your Branch. Most companies that have employee discounts have policies to prevent exactly this. Sometimes they will say that you can only use the company discount for products that you intend to use yourself, they'll specifically ban buying things for friends. Of course enforcing such a rule can be difficult, but a car is a big enough purchase that if they have such a rule, they're likely to pay attention. Other times they try to discourage letting friends use your discount by having rules that make it awkward. Like I used to work for a furniture company that said you had to pick up the furniture personally at the office where you worked. So if you wanted to buy a sofa for your brother who lived in another state, you'd have to pay to ship it, and probably wipe out most of the savings from the employee discount. My daughter's employer says you have to show your employee ID when you make the purchase and then they deduct it from your next paycheck. So you'd have to get your friend to pay you back, maybe loan them your ID if they want to pick it out, which would get awkward. Etc. Assuming the company doesn't care if you buy with an employee discount and re-sell, or their rules are lax enough that you can get away with it, I'm not aware of any law that would stop you. In general there aren't any laws against you re-selling things you've bought. People have garage sales and sell used cars and the like all the time. (There are specific exceptions. Like you can't re-sell prescription drugs.) Q: If I call a tail a leg, then how many legs does a dog have?   A: 4. You can call it whatever you want, it's still a tail. The scenario is nonsense. There is a quid pro quo, the waitress served the customer and he tipped her. A $7 tip on a $24.47 check. He was generous, but misguided if he thought that this note would let the tip go untaxed.  And even though the article you link is fresh, the author has the gift threshold incorrect. This year it's $14,000, and has been so since 2013.  A cute story, and unlikely to be an issue for $7, but the IRS would take notice if this idea gained any traction.  Two references - If Gifts Are Not Income, Why Tax Gratuities? From the Tax Court Files: Is That Money a Gift or Income? It's got every sign of a scam. Signatures are needed on contracts, so you should only place them on below one. Free money sounds too good to be true. Money evading banks is a typical sign of money laundering; why are they trying to avoid paper trails? The normal way to gift money is to just hand it over or pay it to a bank account. If anything, you sign a tax declaration, but you would send that to the taxman yourself. All of this assumes that this relationship isn't as employer-employee relationship, which would require you to withhold taxes. If you send them a small token of appreciation, and you are unable to record it as a business expense, or some other deductible expense, you don't have to be concerned about how they claim it. They decide if they want to risk claiming it was a gift, or if they want to record it as an expense. Even if you say some magic phrase that you think will impress the IRS, the recipient can still decide declare it as income. To have any hope of being able to treat it as a gift they would have to be able to demonstrate that there is a non-business relationship.  If you can claim it as a business expense, or a deductible expense,  they will have to also claim it as income; because your documentation could point the IRS to their lack of documentation.  Giving them a check or sending the payment electronically will require them to claim it as an income, since an audit could require them to explain every line on their bank statements.