Presumably a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the gift exclusion rules. It’s a common misunderstanding that gifts over the annual exclusion limit ($17K per donor-recipient pair, so a couple could give a person $34K or a couple could give a couple $68K in a year) incur tax. They do, but only after exhausting the lifetime gift exclusion amount (currently a little over $12M per donor). There is also a process for designating that you’re gifting 5 years’ worth of gifts all at once (so 5x the amounts above before even touching the lifetime exclusion amount).

It would be exceedingly rare for a $200K gift to actually incur a gift tax payment (though it would require a Form 709 gift tax disclosure filing).