Estate Tax
Gifts made shortly before death
Transfers in the final months attract scrutiny from tax authorities, from Medicaid assessors and from disappointed relatives.
Estate Tax
Exclusions, portability, basis step-up and lifetime gifting.
Estate Tax
Gifting to reduce a taxable estate
Effective where there is genuine exposure, counterproductive where there is not, and the distinction is frequently missed.
Estate Tax
Estate income tax during administration
An estate is a taxpayer in its own right, and executors frequently discover this after the deadline has passed.
Estate Tax
State death taxes and where they apply
A minority of states impose their own taxes, with thresholds well below the federal one and rules that catch people who moved.
Estate Tax
Generation-skipping transfers
A separate tax with its own exemption, aimed at transfers that bypass a generation, and easy to trigger accidentally.
Estate Tax
Portability and the return nobody files
A married couple can double their exemption, and the election is forfeited by default because no return seemed necessary.
Estate Tax
Farms, land and illiquid estates
An estate whose value is entirely in property that cannot easily be divided or sold presents problems that cash estates do not.
Estate Tax
Valuing an estate properly
Date-of-death values determine tax, basis and the fairness of any division, and reconstructing them later is difficult.
Estate Tax
Charitable bequests and how to structure them
Which asset goes to charity matters as much as how much, because the tax treatment differs enormously.
Estate Tax
The step-up in basis and why it matters more than estate tax
For the overwhelming majority of families, the capital gains treatment of inherited assets is the tax provision that actually affects them.
Estate Tax
Lifetime gifting and how it is treated
The gift tax rules are simpler than most people assume, and the reasons to gift are narrower than the advice suggests.
Estate Tax
Estate tax: who it actually affects
Federal exemption levels mean very few estates pay it, and state-level taxes catch a considerably broader group.