ESTATE PLANNING FULL CIRCLE HOMES CAN HELP YOU WITH ALL YOUR REAL ESTATE NEEDS KEN 253-740-1215 Can you force a grandchild to take a drug test in order to receive an inheritance? Insist your heirs use trust funds only for tuition at your alma mater? Make sure your wifes future husbands cant run through money you worked hard to earn? In many cases, the answer is yes—you can, in effect, control your heirs from the grave. Controlling Your Heirs the issue of what you can give away and how is especially relevant now because unusually favorable estate- and gift-tax rules are set to expire. The exemption for both—which is the amount of assets a taxpayer can transfer to others, tax-free, either at death or through gifts while alive—is now $5.12 million per individual, and twice that for a couple. The top tax rate on amounts above that is 35%. But not for long. In January the exemption is slated to drop to $1 million per person, and the top tax rate will jump to 55%. Although many experts dont think those changes will stick because they are so unfavorable, a new regime might well be less generous. President Barack Obama favors a $3.5 million exemption and a 45% top rate. With the law in flux, experts are recommending that wealthier taxpayers who can afford to part with assets make gifts of them this year. The rationale: if the law becomes less favorable, this years gifts either will be grandfathered in or, at worst, wont be clawed back until death. Dont let your children grow up to be crystal-meth dealers, like Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul) from Breaking Bad. Clients are listening. For this year Ill be filing three times as many gift-tax returns as I have in the past, says Lauren Wolven, a tax expert at law firm Horwood, Marcus & Berk in Chicago. Its as if a cork popped out of a bottle, adds Joe McDonald, an attorney at McDonald & Kanyuk in Concord, N.H. As with many good tax deals, there is a hitch: Taxpayers taking advantage of the...
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:10:54 +0000
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