April 08, 2021
Income, Estate, Business, and Tax Strategies Before the Changes in Tax!
Atty. Chris Berry gives some strategies about Income, Estate, Business, and Tax Planning that you could consider, before the proposed Tax changes of the Biden Administration.
Estate Attorney and Advisor Chris Berry of Castle Wealth Group answers questions on retirement and estate planning every Wednesday at 1pm. Register via this link or give our office a call at 844-885-4200.
Castle Wealth Group and Christopher Berry help families with estate planning, elder law, retirement planning, and tax planning from their offices in Brighton, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Bloomfield Hills, and Novi.
Castle Wealth Group helps families with their legal, financial, and tax planning for their retirement and legacy.
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Episode Transcript
Tax Strategies
Hey, this is Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group. Today, we’re going to talk about nine income estate and business planning opportunities based on the proposed tax changes. And if you like this information, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Christopher Berry is a leading a state attorney and advisor in the area of retirement and legacy planning. He has been featured in publications, such as Forbes, Kiplinger’s, Crain’s Detroit and more. He’s the host of the weekly radio show and podcast, The Chris Berry Show. He’s a national thought leader as it relates to retirement and legacy planning, and as author of the Amazon best selling book, The Caregiver’s Legal Guide
So, we’ve been watching the proposed tax planning changes, because we understand that there’s a window of opportunity right now to take advantage before these changes are implemented. And so, these are nine income estate and business planning opportunities based on the proposed tax changes. So the first one is take advantage of the higher gift tax exemptions while they’re available. And this is looking at not only the estate tax, as well as the gift tax, it’s called a unified credit. So right now, an individual has an $11 million unified credit, where they could gift or leave at their death up to $11 million gift tax or estate tax free. Now, what you could do is you could gift a portion of that now, and then when the estate tax and gift tax drops down to $5 million or the proposed $3.5 million, all of those gifts had been removed from the estate for estate and gift tax purposes, thereby passing a tax free versus waiting until these proposed changes go into effect. Then, they’ll be taxed.
Number two, consider a key employee compensation strategies. Should tax rates increase employees may want to consider increasing deferrals into employer non-qualified deferred compensation plans. So again, if income taxes are going up, understand that there might be some strategies available now.
Number three, business owner distributions. If a business owner client has taxable income above a million dollars, they might want to consider paying out dividends prior to the passage of new tax legislation, based on the fact that dividends may be taxed higher in the future.
Number four, consider selling assets that may trigger a longterm capital gain prior to the passage of the new tax legislation. One of the things that Biden has talked about is increasing the tax on capital gains.
Number five, consider capital loss harvesting. Consider selling assets that are in a long-term loss position. And then, use those losses to offset the gains.
Number six, consider grantor trust status. This is something in our office that we’re dealing with on a regular basis, deciding whether a trust should be a grantor trust or a non-grantor trust, a little tax nerdy and legalese. But really, it’s determining how assets will be taxed.
Number seven, business succession planning. There’s some things that maybe should be done prior to this enactment of any of these proposed changes to pass that business in a lower tax environment.
Number eight, business owners are going to want to review their buy/sell agreements, especially based on if there’s life insurance used in any of those buy/sell agreements.
And then number nine, charitable deductions may be more valuable, especially if these changes go through, just because of the increased in the marginal tax brackets, and income tax bracket.
So those are nine income business and estate tax things to consider based on the new proposed tax rules. And if you liked this information, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thank you so much.
Castle Wealth Group has clients across the nation, and helps families plan, protect, and preserve what is important by creating a retirement and legacy blueprint.