Today the SEC resolved charges against Citi and UBS alleging that the two firms misled investors about liquidity risks related to auction-rate securities.
Inflation Adjustments for 2009 Revenue Procedure 2008-66 was released Oct. 16, 2008, making the following adjustments: Annual Gift Exclusion The annual gift exclusion rose from $12,000 to $13,000 for gifts made after Jan. 1, 2009. Gifts to Non...
The Internal Revenue Service has issued a warning to certain sellers of charitable remainder income interests and to their advisors. In Notice 2008-99 (released on Oct. 31, 2008), the IRS has identified as a transaction of interest a certain type...
At David A. Handler's request, a New York-based team of the Wealth Management Group at Bernstein Global Wealth Management did an analysis of the economic benefits of financed gifts as compared to a sale to grantor trust. Here's the report: To...
The wonderful power to adjust bestowed upon trustees by the Uniform Principal and Income Act (UPIA) has a dark side: lawsuits filed by beneficiaries unhappy with the results of those decisions. Most states' UPIA statutes are rather new, so the...
A few years ago, Paul, a successful owner of a home-building company, wanted to reinvest his wealth in his business. The real estate market was booming and few other assets provided the kind of return he could achieve with a business that was well...
One of the questions that practitioners ponder is how to properly discount the value of stock in a closely held C corporation to reflect the future income tax liability on the corporation's unrealized built-in gains (BIGs). For transfer-tax...
Dear federal lawmakers: It's time to change the law so that individual retirement account custodians, not the elderly, are responsible for withdrawing the required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their IRA accounts. Let's stop expecting the...
You might think of the gift tax as the lesser of two evils for transferring wealth, with the other evil being the estate tax. Certainly, it can be cheaper to pay gift tax rather than estate tax, because of the gift tax's nature.1 But always...
