Читать книгу 2012 Estate Planning - Martin Inc. Shenkman - Страница 38

The GST tax has existed since 1986. (There was an earlier version in effect from 1976 to 1986.) It was designed to prevent the wealthiest families from doing an end run around the estate tax. If an individual’s wealth was great enough, without the GST tax he or she could gift or bequeath assets in trust to two, three, and perhaps more generations “down the line” skipping the estate tax on intervening generations. To prevent the possible avoidance of the estate tax, the GST tax was enacted to apply when property transfers skip over a generation for estate tax purposes. Thus, the GST tax is a second layer of transfer tax applied to gifts and bequests that skip a generation. For example, the GST tax may apply if you make a gift to your grandchildren while your child (parent of the grandchildren) is still alive. A gift to a trust to benefit only grandchildren and later descendants could also trigger GST tax (if the trust is created while your child is alive). The planning is arcane and complex even for estate planning specialists; it is likely impenetrable for most taxpayers. But the high hanging fruit can often be the sweetest and worth the stretch to reach it.