Life time gifting is not something we often think about as an estate planning tool, but it is certainly worth some discussion. Gifts (either during life or at death) include cash, stock, land, businesses, personal property, trusts and life insurance proceeds. Every year, a gift giver can give away $14,000 each to any number of individuals without it counting against their unified gift and estate tax exemption (a good strategy if you are worried that your estate will be more than $5 million). Gifts to a spouse (who is a U.S. citizen) are not subject to either gift or estate taxes, and a surviving spouse can utilize the deceased spouse’s unused gift and estate tax exemptions through a concept called “portability” (the surviving spouse could leave up to $10.68 million without paying any gift or estate taxes). As a result of these and other exemptions, less than 0.5 percent of estates ever have to pay any “death taxes.”
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:00:00 +0000