The 2010 Tax Act answered many questions that lingered in practitioners' minds throughout 2010. At the same time, the 2010 Tax Act presented a new question for practitioners: How do we advise executors of estates of 2010 decedents on whether to...
A recent headline in The Chronicle of Philanthropy tells the story: Recession's Hard Lessons Lead to Changes in Endowment Policies: The bulls may be back in control on Wall Street, but the painful lessons that endowment managers endured just a...
Executors of estates of decedents who died in 2010 face a tough choice under the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the 2010 Tax Act). Should they elect to subject the estate to federal estate tax...
To opt or not to opt, that is the question. Shakespeare's Hamlet may have most perfectly stated what estate tax practitioners are being asked when providing guidance under the 2010 estate tax regime. While Hamlet questioned the relative value of...
Most executors know that there need not be estate tax for decedents dying in 2010. Therefore, many executors believe that the estate administration process is easy, as in, No estate tax, no action. Wrong and scary. We recently had an estate of...
Corporations around the world responded aggressively to the global recession and financial crisis, clamping down on spending and hoarding massive piles of cash. In the United States, where cost-cutting was especially dramatic, nonfinancial firms...
Last summer, one of our clients in his mid-forties died unexpectedly, before we were able to finish helping him with his wealth transfer planning. He was a New York resident and was survived by his wife and two young children. The decedent's...
The last decade has seen both the tech wreck and the housing bubble burst, leaving greater skepticism about financial institutions and a deeper interest in identifying “bubbles” amongst both the professional and investing public...
As long-time readers know, we've been conducting a financial advisor satisfaction survey how FAs really feel about their firms for 19 years. With the rise of the independent broker/dealer, we thought we'd take the pulse of how independent...
Joel Greenblatt, managing principal of Gotham Asset Management, is the author of The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success. While the book is aimed at retail investors, financial advisors might do well to...
