Readers forum: Family holiday home

I refer to the ‘Benefit or bother’ article in Taxation 1 October relating to gifts with reservation of benefit (GWROB). A friend recently mentioned that he had given money to his two sons in 2000 for a 25-year remaining lease on a West Country cottage for £40 000. A few years later a 999-year lease was negotiated and paid for again by way of gift to the two sons. As students they don’t own any other property so they assumed they could claim the cottage as their only or main residence although it was used also by the family as a holiday cottage. It has never been let.

Further improvements have since been made and paid for by the parents. In 2015 the two sons made a deed of gift of a one-third interest to their third brother. The property was...