The new estate tax law stipulates that a single person could die owning up to $11.2 million without paying the dreaded death tax and for married couples the amount has been increased to $22.4 million, if a timely portability election was made after the death of the first spouse to die.\u00a0 Both of these changes went into effect January 1, 2018.<\/p>\n
As with anything having to do with taxes, caution needs to be taken.\u00a0 Lack of attention to the new details in the law can lead to misapplication of the changes which would create significant tax consequences for the beneficiaries of the estate as it relates to gifting.<\/p>\n
Especially important for those tracking the amended estate tax law, is to be aware that the new version will leave in place the laws that stipulate; when a person dies,\u00a0 the cost basis of the assets \u2013 not including IRAs and retirement plans, of course \u2013 would be increased to the value of the asset at the date of the owner\u2019s death.\u00a0 This is referred to as a step up in basis; thus the capital gain or profit element, created in the assets overtime, is then forgiven at the time of the owner\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
However, any misunderstanding that leads to misapplication of these laws could rain this new benefit and lead to significant taxes due.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The new estate tax law stipulates that a single person could die owning up to $11.2 million without paying the dreaded death tax and for married couples the amount has been increased to $22.4 million, if a timely portability election was made after the death of the first spouse to die.\u00a0 Both of these changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/est-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}