Insights on Planned Giving From the BNY Annual Charitable Giving Report for 2024
Once Removed Episode 19: The Step-Transaction Doctrine and the Case of Smaldino
Once Removed Episode 18: The Reciprocal Trust Doctrine
Once Removed Episode 16: Gift and Estate Tax, Inflation Adjustments for 2024
Once Removed Episode 17: Annual Gifting to Individuals: Options, Opportunities and Pitfalls
Taking the Sting Out of Death Taxes with Dylan Metzner, Jones & Keller
Gift Tax Basics
NGE On Demand: GRAT Trusts with Eric Mann
To Give or Not to Give: Considerations for Year-End Gifting
ATTENTION ALL CADETS!
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on July 4, 2025, is a sweeping piece of legislation spanning nearly 1,000 pages. It includes significant changes to federal estate and income tax laws that will affect...more
November 2024 AFRs and 7520 Rate - The November 2024 Section 7520 rate for use with estate planning techniques such as CRTs, CLTs, QPRTs and GRATs is 4.40%, which was the same as the October 2024 rate...more
The TCJA doubled the lifetime exclusion and GST tax exemption. This exclusion amount, adjusted for inflation, is now $13.61 million and is expected to be approximately $13.99 million in 2025. However, in 2026, the amount will...more
Earlier this week the White House released its Fiscal Year 2025 Budget. Of course, the federal government has not yet adopted a budget for the Fiscal Year 2024 even as we approach that year’s halfway mark. But I digress. The...more
This is The End- I have dreaded the year end for as long as I can remember. As a teenager and then as a young adult I associated the final quarter of the year, and especially the period beginning on Thanksgiving and...more
“Déjà vu All Over Again”- The White House last week released the President’s Budget for the Fiscal Year 2023. The Budget is ambitious, but its “investments,” we are told, “are more than paid for with tax reforms focused on...more
Our annual estate and tax planning newsletter discusses certain concepts and techniques that should be considered in 2022 by our clients and friends in California. Perhaps the most important recent development was the failure...more
“Legendary was the Xanadu where Kubla Kahn decreed his stately pleasure dome.” Legendary too were the colossal errors made by Mary Kane in this celebrated classic movie which follows a journalist as he tries to uncover the...more
The House Ways and Means Committee recently released its plan to pay for President Biden's proposed Build Back Better Act. Many of the changes to the Internal Revenue Code proposed by that plan would directly impact gift and...more
House Democrats recently released additional legislative proposals that, if passed, would affect several commonly used estate planning techniques. Among those proposals are three that would significantly impact some of the...more
Advance planning in light of the proposed tax law changes included in the For the 99.5 Percent Act, STEP Act and the Biden Administration’s Green Book. Proposed tax law changes introduced this year provide valuable insight...more
In 2020, COVID-19, the US presidential election, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the TCJA), and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (the CARES ACT) dominated the planning landscape....more
Twelve years ago, the nation entered the Global Financial Crisis, caused by a combination of artificially inflated real estate prices and behaviors by certain financial institutions ranging from speculative to criminal. The...more
In 2016, we continued to experience a period of relative stability in our federal transfer tax system and have been able to plan without expecting imminent significant changes to the system. Under the American Taxpayer Relief...more
In this final installment in our three-part series, we discuss the planning technique known as Charitable Lead Annuity Trusts (CLATs). Like Intra-Family Loans and Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs) described in previous...more
I. INTRODUCTION - This outline is a selective and evolving review of the history of the modern federal estate tax. It originated during the attempts to repeal the estate tax in President Clinton’s second term and...more