Take-Away: The ability of spouses to split their gifts is a great opportunity to avoid paying gift taxes. However, there are several ‘traps’ to avoid when spouses split gifts. Perhaps the biggest ‘trap’ is ignoring the scheduled decrease in the spouses’ applicable exemption amount in 2026. Background: The donor’s spouse, for gift tax purposes, may […]

Take-Away: Michigan enjoys very favorable laws with regard to the protection of assets held in a trust. While settlors may take some comfort in that knowledge, less clear is how other states will treat a ‘Michigan’ asset protection trust if the beneficiary moves to a state where its laws or its public policy are not […]

Take-Away: The division of and IRA and a 401(k) account are different in a divorce property settlement, as can be the income tax consequences that result from that division. Differentiating an IRA from a 401(k) account is important to avoid accelerating the income tax liability associated with those retirement accounts. Key to this differentiation is […]

Take-Away: The Tax Court finally allowed a charitable façade easement for historic structures as a charitable income tax deduction. The significance of that decision is that for several years now, donors of charitable easements, including façade easements, have not fared well at all in the Tax Court trying to sustain their income tax charitable deductions. […]

Take-Away: The potential exists for new rules that will apply to the historically high federal gift and estate tax rules. While the IRS has settled concerns about the possible clawback into a donor’s taxable estate with regard to the donor’s lifetime gifts using the temporarily large federal gift tax exemption, the IRS also promised to […]

Take-Away:  Since the 2017 Tax Act and its doubling of the applicable exemption amount to avoid transfer taxes, there has been less discussion with regard to the need to implement estate freeze strategies. That may change if the applicable exemption amount is reduced in the next couple of years and the interest rates used to […]

Take-Away: A sale of an appreciating asset to an irrevocable grantor trust can shift future appreciation of the asset out of the transferor’s taxable estate, but not consume any of the transferor’s federal transfer tax exemption. The sale of the appreciating asset is exchanged for a fixed, or frozen, promissory note. The sale to a […]

Take-Away: Yet another estate freeze strategy is a preferred partnership which provides the senior family member with a fixed stream of cash flow in the form of a preferred interest. This freeze strategy can be much more complicated than either a grantor retained annuity trust, or GRAT, or the sale of an appreciating asset to […]

Take-Away: Using self-directed IRA is often asking for trouble. Trouble not only in the form of prohibited transaction penalties but also in disqualifying the IRA, thus causing the entire IRA balance to be subject to immediate taxation. A recent Tax Court decision demonstrates the risks associated using a self-directed IRA, or perhaps more importantly, relying […]

Take-Away: While the SECURE Act made the 10-year payout for inherited IRAs of owners who died after 2019, there is still some confusion over the distribution rules if the IRA owner died prior to 2019 leaving their IRA to a see-through trust. Background: We know that that SECURE Act created the 10-year distribution rule for […]