In 2022, the annual exclusion for Federal Gift Taxes increased to $16,000 per person per year. Although there is near-universal acceptance of the importance of gifting, there are several issues you should consider before making any gifts. The manner in which gifts are made can have a major impact on your beneficiaries. This is particularly true if the recipient is under 21 years of age, and it can be an acute issue if the recipient is a minor under the age of 18. Outright gifts to children and grandchildren have their own drawbacks, including limited control over the gifts made, exposure to creditors, divorce, and other issues involving the beneficiary. For these reasons, trust options should be considered to afford greater protection and structure for your intended beneficiaries.
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Continue Reading The Annual Exclusion for Gift Taxes has Increased to $16,000 – What Issues Should I Consider?

Throughout 2021, Congress and the Executive Branch proposed tax code changes that – had they ultimately passed – would have significantly changed various estate planning techniques. Some proposals would have sidelined a number of established estate planning strategies while other proposals could have increased the frequency of use and usefulness of others.

Some proposals would have reduced the estate and gift tax exemption amount from its current level of $12.06 million per taxpayer to $3.5 – $6.85 million per taxpayer, depending on the source. Although there is certainly no guarantee that such a proposal will not be made in the future, we can nevertheless focus for now on what we do know about the law as written today and what steps we can take to address the coming changes.…

Continue Reading Gift and Estate Tax Changes

On April 1, 2020, the Department of Treasury and the IRS announced that Social Security beneficiaries who are not typically required to file tax returns will not need to file an abbreviated tax return to receive a stimulus payment. Instead, the IRS will use the information of the Form SSA-1099 and Form RRB-1099 to generate stimulus payments to Social Security recipients who did not file tax returns in 2018 or 2019. Recipients will receive these payments as a direct deposit or by paper check, in whatever way they normally receive their benefits.
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Continue Reading Update: Stimulus Payments – When Do I Get Mine?

On March 20, 2020, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the due date for the filing of income tax returns will now be July 15 instead of the usual April 15. Secretary Mnuchin announced this on Twitter. As of 12:30 pm EDT, the Internal Revenue Service had not posted anything on their website.

At @realDonaldTrump’s direction, we are moving Tax Day from April 15 to July 15. All taxpayers and businesses will have this additional time to file and make payments without interest or penalties.

— Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) March 20, 2020

Notice…

As part of the President’s emergency declaration, the Secretary of the Treasury was instructed “to provide relief from tax deadlines to Americans who have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 emergency.” With that direction, the Internal Revenue Service has issued Notice 2020-17, which extends the due date for the payment of Federal income taxes from April 15, 2020, to July 15, 2020. This includes tax payments that would be due for the 2019 tax year, as well as quarterly estimated income tax payments that would be due April 15, 2020, for the 2020 tax year. The total tax amount that can be deferred is a maximum of $10 million for each Subchapter C corporation, and $1 million for all other taxpayers.
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Continue Reading Tax Relief Because of COVID-19

Benjamin Franklin once famously said that, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” President Trump’s recent tax reform proposal is the administration’s attempt to alleviate one of these certainties of life.

President Trump’s proposal, which was released on Sept. 27, contained the following changes for individual taxpayers:…

Continue Reading A Look at President Trump’s Tax Reform Proposal