Estate Tax Protection & Planning

You work your entire life to save and have enough money to comfortably retire—and ideally leave something for your loved ones when you pass away. During your life, you pay all kinds of taxes: income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and so on. And at the end, the government even wants to tax you on the assets you have left at your death. This is known as the estate tax, sometimes called the inheritance tax or death tax. The best way to protect your assets and your family’s future from excessive taxation is to understand and implement tax minimization or tax avoidance strategies.

How Does the Estate Tax Work?
The estate tax is totally separate from federal income taxes and is paid on the net value of all your assets owned at your death. The estate tax rate can be up to 40%, And that bill must be paid to the IRS within 9 months of the decedent’s death. However, there are fairly sizable exemptions to the estate tax, so it’s primarily high net-worth individuals and their families who are affected.

Exemptions to the Estate Tax
the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 nearly doubled the allowable exemptions to the estate tax, ensuring that even fewer families will be affected:

• Estate tax exemption for individuals expanded to $11.58 million.
• Estate tax exemption for married couples expanded $23.16 million.

So, unless your estate is valued at more than $11.58 million, you won’t have to worry about the estate tax at this time. But for those who are affected, there are numerous estate planning strategies available that can greatly reduce the amount owed.  LET P.A. LUNDY & ASSOCIATES SHOW YOU HOW!

Advanced Estate Planning Strategies

Families with high-value estates face several complex legal and tax issues—and the estate tax is only one of them. We offer a number of advanced estate planning strategies that are primarily aimed at reducing a family’s tax burden. In addition to the estate tax, we also help families navigate the gift tax and generation-skipping tax to pass assets on for successive generations without risk of estate tax decimating the estate at each generation.

Some of our most popular advanced estate planning tools and strategies include:

• Life insurance trusts
• Qualified personal residence trusts
• Grantor retained annuity trusts
• Asset protection trusts
• Land trusts
• Dynasty Trusts
• Family limited partnerships or limited liability companies
• Asset gifting