There Has Never Been a Better Time to Make a Gift – Especially Before the Year's End

With the estate tax exemption amount at $5,120,000 per person for the rest of 2012, there has never been a greater opportunity to transfer wealth free of estate tax and gift tax.  In a little over two months, unless Congress takes action (which in an election year is very unlikely), the estate tax exemption amount will drop to $1,000,000 per person with a top tax rate of 55%.

If your estate exceeds $1,000,000, you may want to seriously consider taking advantage of an opportunity this year to gift a portion of your estate to your kids or grandkids.  This not only allows you to get the amount you gifted out of your estate so that it is not subject to estate taxes at a potential 55% tax rate, but it also gets all the future anticipated growth out of your estate.  A further benefit is that you can provide protection against creditors, ex-spouses and spend-down for long-term care on the portion that you gift.

We may never see another opportunity like this again- transferring this much wealth from one generation to the next without incurring any adverse tax consequences.  The only downside is that we only have a short window left to do this.  Time runs out at midnight on December 31^st of this year, the moment by which the gift must be completed in order to take advantage of this legacy wealth preservation planning.

The gifting process takes some time, so if you would benefit from this strategy, you must start now to meet the deadline.

Putting something like this off can end up costing you millions of dollars.  If you are looking to preserve as much of your wealth as you can from the federal government’ estate and gift taxes, there has never been a better opportunity to do so.  If you would like to learn more about this legacy wealth preservation strategy to minimize taxes, call our office to schedule a free meeting with one of our estate planning attorneys.

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Morris Hall, PLLC

At Morris Hall, we have focused our legal practice on estate planning for over 50 years.  Along with estate planning, our attorneys help clients and their families with matters of probate, trust administration, wills, powers of attorney, business planning, succession planning, legacy planning, charitable gifting, and other important legal aspects...Read More!

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