Year End Tax Planning
With 2011 coming to a close, it’s time to take a final look at tax strategies for year end. It’s especially important this year because many incentives are set to expire unless extended. Conventional wisdom says to defer income and accelerate deductions. Depending on your perspective as to whether tax rates will decrease, stay the [...]
CORPORATE OWNED LIFE INSURANCE
Corporate-owned life insurance (COLI) is a life insurance policy on an employee, owner, or director’s life that is owned by the employer, with benefits paid to the employer. Corporate- owned life insurance was originally intended to hedge against the financial cost of losing key employees due to an unexpected death, the cost of training replacements, [...]
Estate and Retirement Planning for the Family Business Owner(s)
Advisers to family businesses in times of low interest rates are using a not-so-new way of transferring wealth and providing for retirement cash flow. It is called “sale to a grantor trust,” and it takes advantage of a limited time offer: under current IRS rules, the federal exemption for gift tax is $5 million through [...]
THE ESTATE TAX HAS ARISEN!
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the “2010 Act”) became law effective December 17, 2010. The 2010 Act makes some significant changes to the federal estate and gift tax law. These changes, however, are only effective for years 2010 through 2012. After 2012, the estate tax as existed prior to [...]
Husband and Wife – A True Partnership or Joint Venture?
The Internal Revenue Service defines a partnership as a business entity with two or more members. The general characteristics of a true partnership are: Assets transferred to the partnership by the partners are considered co-owned by the partnership, not the individual partners. The lifetime of the partnership is usually limited by the lifetime of each [...]
