Planning to Live Beyond 2025? How You Can Still Enjoy Estate Tax Reform’s Sunset Special
The just-enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doubles the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer lifetime tax exemptions through 2025. The exemptions revert to their pre-Act levels on January 1, 2026. Ignoring inflation adjustments, the combined exemptions for a married couple will then fall from over $22 million to $11 million. At the 40% Federal transfer tax rate, a 2026 sunset will increase a married couple’s estate tax by $4.4 million.
Do you want to avoid $4.4 million of estate tax, even if you plan to celebrate the 2026 New Year amongst the living?
A married couple can permanently harvest the increased exemptions by gifting assets with value up to the full $22 million exemption amount before 2026. If you gift into a generation-skipping trust, the exempted assets can pass through many generations free of transfer tax. With valuation discounts for lack of control and lack of marketability still fully available, family business assets are particularly attractive for gifting.
A taxpayer can not use the increased exemption until he or she first make gifts exhausting his or her pre-Act exemption. An individual does not create an additional tax benefit until he or she first gifts about $5.5 million worth of property. A couple does not capture the full additional benefit until they give away property worth over $22 million.
These ordering rules create an obstacle for many, who can not afford to give away that much property. Married taxpayers in that situation may consider funding “Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts.” Each spouse gifts assets to a trust for the other spouse, leaving the gifted assets available to the beneficiary spouse for his or her lifetime. When the beneficiary spouse dies, the remaining trust assets pass to children or other beneficiaries free of estate tax. Persons who created such trusts shortly before 2013, when another legislative sunset almost reduced the lifetime exemptions, can fund their existing trusts with additional gifts.
Many families will wait until 2026 is closer before taking action. Families with sufficient wealth to afford substantial gifting, who also expect estate tax liability even with the increased exemptions, should consider gifting sooner, to remove appreciation in the gifted assets before 2026 from their future taxable estates.
For more information regarding the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, follow these links: