Clever Ways in Which to Save on Estate Taxes
In the next few years, very few people who pass away will end up owing the government anything in estate taxes. That’s because every American now is granted a $5 million estate exemption – leave an estate worth anything less than that to your family and there will be no estate taxes involved. If you should happen to be one of those lucky people who have assets that add up to more than $5 million to leave to your loved ones, here are tips that you can use, (you and your spouse), to save some money.
There is such a thing known as an Unlimited Marital Deduction (that’s unlimited!). The husband or wife of an American citizen gets to leave their spouse any amount of money without owing anything in federal estate taxes. The $5 million federal estate tax exemption together with this, can add up to some truly significant tax protection. Of course, this only takes any estate tax heat off the spouse who dies. The spouse who survives will end up with a huge estate that they will owe taxes on. That’s where these other ideas for saving yourself estate taxes come in.
Here’s a really cool idea the law has. You don’t just get to leave your spouse $5 million worth of estate. If you have less than $5 million to leave, whatever part of the exemption you don’t use, you can leave that to your spouse as well. That’s a rule unlike anything that exists anywhere else. They call this a portable estate tax exemption.
There were no estate taxes in the year 2010. You can leave your family billions of dollars and there were no estate taxes to pay. Now that isn’t the case anymore. To work your estate down so that you can get in under the $5 million ceiling, you could consider instructing your executor to give a bit of money away to IRS approved charities. Of course, this may not be a move that makes a lot of sense to some people. Unless you actually do want to give away to charities to begin with, giving money away so as to avoid paying estate taxes really isn’t a move that you profit from. You may save money on taxes; but you still have to lose that money to charities. And that’s money that your loved ones would have received otherwise.
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There are all kinds of approved ways in which you can whittle down the value of your estate so that you can work those estate taxes down. For instance, instead of actually leaving all the money you have to your loved ones after you die, you can begin spending it on them while you’re still alive – in tax-exempt ways. For instance, you could pay for the medical bills or college tuition of loved ones. That would be completely tax-exempt – like giving away to a charity. And then, you can make a $13,000 gift annually to every family member that you like. And this is an exception that sits on top of the $5 million.