A trustee’s duty to annually communicate and account seems to be expanding to potentially peripheral persons, called potential distributees, who may or may not, ever benefit from a Trust.

The failure to timely repay a qualified plan loan results in a taxable deemed distribution along with exposure to the early distribution 10% penalty, and possibly also a 20% substantial underpayment of tax penalty.

There is not much mystery to the income tax basis of jointly held assets between spouses. Yet there is one wrinkle that might be exploited by some couples with long ago acquired jointly owned property.

There are strict ordering rules with regard to distributions from a Roth IRA, along with an aggregation rule that often creates some confusion when distributions are taken from a Roth IRA.

Individuals who expect to receive large lifetime gifts, or inheritance, often enter into a prenuptial agreement in order to protect their separate property.

The tax consequences with regard to transfers to charitable remainder trusts are very tricky and detailed. If those rules are not carefully followed by the donor, the penalty can be very high income taxes, interest and penalties.

Federal stealth taxes should be kept in mind if there is a chance assets might be gifted or inherited from a person who was a non-resident alien or a one-time Green Card holder.

Ten recommendations to follow for planning distributions for retirement benefits under the SECURE Act were recently identified by an expert.

The IRS’s Proposed Regulations which are intended prohibit an estate tax deduction of some ‘concocted or contrived’ estate expenses, are so broad as to threaten some common estate plan steps where the estate’s illiquidity is a result of non-tax reasons.

Individuals need to fully understand the consequences when they use the short-hand terms per stirpes, per capita, or by representation in their Wills, Trusts, and beneficiary designations.