Читать книгу 2012 Estate Planning - Martin Inc. Shenkman - Страница 14

The generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax is quite complex and is explained in greater detail in Chapter 2. For multi-generational planning (that is, planning for children, grandchildren, and even more remote descendants), optimizing the amount of family wealth that can be transferred free of the GST tax is clearly the elixir that drives much of the estate planning effort for high net worth clients.

President Obama has proposed limiting the number of years for which a donor’s GST exemption can be allocated to gifts made to a multi-generational trust. If the trust is formed in 2012 and the gifts made to it are completed prior to the effective date of any such legislation, the amounts gifted to the trust may be grandfathered for GST purposes and thus not affected by any such restriction, if enacted in the future. The benefits of obtaining favorable grandfathering for GST purposes could have a dramatic impact on future transfer taxes of your descendants younger than children (e.g., grandchildren). But the transfer tax savings are not the only potential benefit. If the assets are paid out of the trust when the GST allocation ends, that would also undermine the asset protection planning and other benefits that such a spendthrift trust affords the future generations.

This will all be discussed in greater detail and planning techniques illustrated later in Chapters 5 and 10. The key point for this introduction is that this incredibly valuable transfer tax benefit could be eliminated by the laws scheduled to take effect in 2013 and by other tax proposals that might be enacted.