There are many reasons that may motivate one to give gifts. From an estate planning perspective, however, lifetime gifts offer significant tax advantages. The overall tax burden on the transfer of assets from one generation to the next can be significantly reduced by a planned giving program. Some of the rules that make lifetime gifting advantageous [...]
In U.S. v. Windsor, the United States Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which limited the definition of marriage to a legal union between a man and a woman. The Court held that section 3 of DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as it pertains to same-sex [...]
The much publicized Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is a complicated piece of legislation. Although many of the regulations implementing PPACA are not yet finalized, beginning in 2014 individuals are required to (1) obtain health-care coverage that provides basic insurance referred to as “minimum essential coverage” (MEC); (2) qualify for an exemption from [...]
A buy-sell agreement is an agreement among the owners of a business entity, or among the owners and the entity, that provides for the purchase of an owner’s interest in the entity under specified circumstances. The agreements come in a variety of forms and accomplish different objectives. Such agreements are useful from an estate planning [...]
More than 10 years of uncertainty regarding federal transfer tax law was brought to an end on January 2, 2013, with the enactment of ATRA, which made permanent many of the changes previously made to the estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes by the passage of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act [...]
