Knowledge Base
Tax strategy, healthcare before Medicare, the post-FIRE identity shift, and the financial decisions that get more complicated after you stop earning.
1054 articles — page 78 of 88
For most revocable trusts, the answer during the grantor's lifetime is no. Under IRC Sections 671–679, the IRS treats the grantor as the owner of all trust assets for federal income tax purposes, which means revocable trust tax returns are simply filed on the grantor's personal Form 1040. That chang
Gifting RMD funds to family members is a legitimate wealth transfer strategy, but it does not reduce the income tax you owe on those distributions. The IRS taxes RMDs as ordinary income to the account owner in the year distributed, regardless of what you do with the money afterward. Understanding th
GST trusts let you transfer assets to grandchildren or later generations while applying a single lifetime exemption, rather than watching wealth erode through successive rounds of estate tax at each generational transfer. For anyone holding $10M or more, the math on that difference is not subtle.
There is no inheritance tax in NZ. New Zealand abolished estate duty in 1992 and gift duty in 2011, confirmed by the IRD, leaving no direct tax on wealth transferred at death or by gift. For high-net-worth individuals, that is the headline. The nuance is everything underneath it.
Canada has no federal estate or inheritance tax. That framing, while technically accurate, is also dangerously incomplete for anyone with a $5M+ estate. The Canada Revenue Agency's deemed disposition rules effectively create the same economic result: upon death, you are treated as having sold all ca
Swiss inheritance law for non-residents is not a minor administrative detail. If you hold Swiss real estate, a Swiss bank account, or an interest in a Swiss operating company, Swiss succession rules will govern how those assets transfer at death, regardless of what your home-country will says. The 2
Irrevocable trust expenses fall into two categories: those that reduce the trust's taxable income and those that don't. Getting this distinction wrong costs real money. For a $10M trust, misclassifying a single year's worth of investment advisory fees, trustee compensation, and administrative costs
Inheritance attorney fees for large estates typically run $5,000 to $15,000 for straightforward planning engagements, $25,000 to $75,000 for complex trust structures, and well over $150,000 when probate litigation enters the picture. For FATFIRE-level estates, the more important question is not how
Trust fund costs range from $3,000 for a basic revocable living trust to $50,000 or more for a complex irrevocable structure with dynasty trust provisions. For anyone holding significant assets, those setup fees are almost beside the point. The real question is what the trust saves you, and on that
If you own French property and you're not a French resident, the EU Succession Regulation (EU 650/2012) changed the rules on August 17, 2015. Understanding exactly what it does and does not do for non-EU nationals is where most estate plans go wrong. The short version: it helps EU citizens considera
Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Wilmington Trust consistently rank as the strongest institutional trustees for irrevocable trust accounts at the $5M+ level. But the right answer depends on your trust structure, asset composition, preferred situs state, and h
The term "deed of inheritance" gets used loosely, and that looseness costs people money. In U.S. property law, there is no standardized legal instrument by that name. According to the Uniform Law Commission, the primary legal framework for non-probate real property transfers at death is the Uniform