Estates, Trusts & Gift Tax
Planning to Ensure Financial Well-Being
ASL partners with you to plan and preserve your financial well-being, for today and generations to come.
We provide tools and strategies to preserve your assets and minimize estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. We work closely with your attorney, financial planner and life insurance agent. And if you’re still assembling your team, we’re happy to connect you with our trusted network of experts. Together, we’ll help craft a plan to effectively preserve your wealth and optimize your company’s succession.
Trust Consulting and Tax Return Preparation
The reasons that you create a trust are as personal as they are financial. We can help evaluate alternative strategies to accomplish your unique goals, and efficiently manage the tax compliance for:
- Revocable and irrevocable trusts
- Gifting strategies, GRATs and family limited partnerships
- Life insurance trusts
- Qualified personal residence trusts
- Charitable trusts, private foundations and donor advised funds
- Annuities and retirement planning
- Guardianships, conservatorships and special needs trusts
- Custodial accounts and education planning
Estate and Trust Administration: During Life and After Death
The team at ASL possesses the comprehensive knowledge and experience, plus the detail-oriented organizational skills needed to assist you, your executor, and your survivors in all phases of estate and trust administration and tax compliance, including preparation of the Form 706 estate tax return.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Estate and gift taxes are transfer taxes paid by the transferor. Estate tax applies to assets transferred at a person’s death, while gift tax applies to assets transferred during a person’s lifetime. Both share a unified exemption amount, which is the maximum cumulative value of assets any individual can transfer tax-free during their lifetime and/or at death.
The 2024 federal exemption amount is $13.61 million per person, meaning a married couple has a potential combined exemption of $27.22 million. Generally, cumulative transfers valued below this threshold are not subject to transfer tax. California currently has no estate tax, however more than a dozen states, including Hawaii and Oregon, do have an estate or inheritance tax.
The federal estate and gift tax exemption is at an all-time high but is slated to “sunset” at the end of 2025. Starting in 2026, the exemption is expected to drop by half, leaving the exemption at approximately $7 million per person.
The current marginal estate tax rate is 40% and formal probate can be costly. Plans to minimize this potential burden may include:
- Strategically gifting assets during your lifetime
- Setting up revocable and irrevocable trusts
- Maximizing the unlimited marital deduction
- Preserving the unused exemption of a deceased spouse
- Leveraging charitable giving
With the looming exemption sunset, we strongly encourage our clients to review the planning documents they may already have in place. Additionally, the sunset provides unique planning opportunities for large estates to utilize the historically high lifetime exemption before the end of 2025. Consulting with an experienced estate planning CPA can help you navigate these options and develop a plan to fit your specific circumstances and goals.
