Gifting RMD to Family: What Actually Cuts Your Tax Bill

Gifting RMD to Family: What Actually Reduces Your Tax Bill

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 that distinction is the starting point for building a strategy that actually works.

If your IRA balance sits north of $5 million, your annual RMDs are likely pushing you into the 32% to 37% federal brackets. For 2026, the 37% rate applies to taxable income above $640,600 for single filers and $768,700 for married couples filing jointly, per Revenue Procedure 2025-32. The strategies worth your attention are the ones that reduce what lands on your 1040, not just what lands in your children's bank accounts.

One framing note before the details: the planning landscape changed materially in July 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21) eliminated the scheduled 2026 sunset of the enlarged estate and gift tax exemption. The old "gift before the exemption gets cut in half" urgency is gone. The rest of this article walks through what replaced it, with 2026 numbers throughout.

Can You Give Your RMD Directly to a Family Member to Avoid Taxes?

No. RMD amounts are included in your gross income and taxed as ordinary income in the year they are distributed, and giving the money to a family member afterward does not change that. There is no mechanism to route an RMD into a relative's hands, or into their retirement account, that removes the distribution from your own taxable income.

According to IRS Publication 590-B, the subsequent use of distributed funds, whether you spend them, reinvest them, or write a check to your grandchildren, has no effect on the tax treatment. You cannot deduct the gift against the income, and you cannot assign the distribution to a lower-bracket family member.

What you can do is take the after-tax proceeds and gift them within annual exclusion limits. For 2026, the annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient, unchanged from 2025, or $38,000 per recipient for a married couple. Gifts within the exclusion require no gift tax return and consume none of your lifetime exemption.

The lifetime exemption itself is the big 2026 update. The federal estate and gift tax exemption is now $15 million per individual, $30 million per married couple, effective January 1, 2026. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that figure is permanent, indexed for inflation starting in 2027, and no longer subject to the TCJA sunset that would have cut it roughly in half. If your planning documents still assume a 2026 reversion to about $7 million, they are out of date by an act of Congress.

Gifting RMD proceeds still reduces your taxable estate, and for estates that may grow past the exemption that remains a real benefit at a 40% federal estate tax rate. It just is not an income tax benefit. For most households under those thresholds, the better reasons to gift are state estate taxes and shifting future growth, both covered below.

For gifting strategies from your IRA that go beyond simple cash transfers, the mechanics and sequencing matter considerably.

What Is a Qualified Charitable Distribution and How Does It Reduce RMD Taxes?

A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is a direct transfer from your IRA to a qualified charity that counts toward your RMD but is excluded from your adjusted gross income. It is the only mechanism that lets funds leave a traditional IRA without being taxed to you. Under IRC Section 408(d)(8), individuals aged 70½ or older can transfer up to $111,000 per person in 2026 directly from an IRA to an eligible charity, per IRS Notice 2025-67. A married couple with separate IRAs can each use the full limit, for $222,000 combined.

Three mechanical rules matter. The transfer must go trustee-to-charity; a check made out to you that you later donate does not qualify. The receiving organization must be a public charity; donor-advised funds, supporting organizations, and most private foundations are excluded by statute. And ordering matters: the first dollars out of your IRA each year count toward your RMD, so execute QCDs before taking your remaining distribution.

The math is stark. A retiree in the 37% federal bracket residing in California, where the top state rate is 13.3%, faces a combined marginal rate approaching 50% on ordinary income. A $111,000 QCD in 2026 avoids roughly $55,000 in combined tax compared to taking the same distribution as income. That comparison understates the QCD's edge, because donating cash and deducting it got worse in 2026: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposed a 0.5% of AGI floor on itemized charitable deductions and capped the deduction's benefit at a 35% rate for taxpayers in the 37% bracket. A QCD bypasses both because the income never reaches your return. Vanguard's process for qualified charitable distributions confirms the compounding benefit: QCDs suppress AGI, which can lower Medicare IRMAA surcharges and reduce the taxable share of Social Security benefits.

That IRMAA connection deserves emphasis. Medicare uses a two-year lookback on MAGI, so your 2026 distributions set your 2028 premiums. Per the CMS 2026 premium announcement, the standard 2026 Part B premium is $202.90 per month, surcharges begin at $109,000 of MAGI for single filers and $218,000 for joint filers, and the top tier (MAGI of $500,000 single or $750,000 joint) pays $689.90 per month for Part B. Add the top Part D surcharge of $91.00 per month and the IRMAA add-ons alone cost a top-tier enrollee about $6,900 per person per year, nearly $14,000 for a couple. QCDs cut that exposure at the source.

The SECURE 2.0 QCD-to-Charitable Remainder Trust Provision

SECURE 2.0 added a provision that most advisors have still not fully absorbed. Account owners can make a one-time QCD, capped at $55,000 in 2026 per Notice 2025-67, to fund a Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust (CRAT), Charitable Remainder Unitrust (CRUT), or charitable gift annuity. One transaction satisfies part of your RMD, generates a lifetime income stream back to you or your spouse, and sends the remainder to charity at death.

The mechanics require careful drafting, so this is not a DIY transaction, and at $55,000 the economics are modest relative to a dedicated charitable remainder trust funded with appreciated securities. Treat it as a complement, not a centerpiece.

Should You Use a QCD or Gift Your RMD Cash to Family?

Use a QCD for every charitable dollar first, because it is the only option that removes RMD income from your return; gift to family with whatever remains, accepting that those gifts are made with fully taxed dollars. The two moves solve different problems: the QCD is an income tax tool, the family gift is an estate and wealth transfer tool. High-net-worth retirees with both charitable intent and family transfer goals should almost always run both in parallel rather than choosing.

One asymmetry worth internalizing: a QCD saves tax at your full marginal rate, up to 50% combined in high-tax states, while a family gift of RMD cash saves nothing today and only reduces a 40% estate tax that, at a $30 million exemption per couple, most households will never pay. If your estate is safely under the exemption with no state exposure, the honest case for gifting RMD cash is not tax at all. It is getting capital to your children in their 30s and 40s when it changes their lives, rather than in their 60s when it changes their brokerage statements.

How Does Gifting RMD Money to Children Affect Your Taxable Income?

It does not affect your taxable income at all. The income tax on the RMD is yours in the year of distribution, and a subsequent gift to your children neither creates a deduction nor shifts the income to their returns. The gift is simply a transfer of after-tax dollars.

Indirectly, there are two legitimate effects worth modeling. First, gifting RMD proceeds reduces your taxable estate, which matters for estates tracking above the $15 million per person federal exemption or sitting in one of the states covered below. Second, if the gifted cash funds assets that grow in your children's hands rather than yours, future appreciation and investment income accumulate outside your estate and outside your income tax return.

Be careful with the second point when recipients are young. The kiddie tax applies to children under 18 and full-time students under 24, and for 2026 it taxes a child's unearned income above $2,700 at the parents' marginal rate, per Revenue Procedure 2025-32. The first $1,350 is tax-free and the next $1,350 is taxed at the child's own rate. Gifting income-producing assets to a 20-year-old college student does not move that income into a low bracket; it moves it right back to yours. Adult children with their own careers face no such limitation.

One structural point that trips up even sophisticated planners: gifted assets carry your cost basis to the recipient, while assets transferred at death receive a step-up in basis under IRC Section 1014, potentially eliminating embedded gains entirely. That asymmetry drives the next section.

Is Gifting Appreciated Stock Better Than Gifting RMD Cash?

For most high-net-worth families, yes. Gifting appreciated securities from your taxable brokerage account transfers more value per dollar of tax cost than gifting RMD cash, because the RMD was taxed at ordinary rates up to 37% federal while the stock's embedded gain can be taxed at the recipient's capital gains rate, which may be as low as 0%. Use RMD proceeds for living expenses and reinvestment, and let low-basis stock do the family gifting work.

The 2026 capital gains brackets make the arbitrage concrete. Long-term gains are taxed at 0% up to $49,450 of taxable income for single filers and $98,900 for married couples filing jointly, at 15% up to $545,500 and $613,700 respectively, and at 20% above that, per Revenue Procedure 2025-32. An adult child in residency, graduate school, or the early career years can sell gifted shares at 0% or 15%, gains that would have cost you 23.8% including the 3.8% net investment income tax. The kiddie tax caveat applies: this only works for recipients outside its reach.

The interplay with the step-up at death is where the real decisions live. Rank your taxable holdings by embedded gain:

• Highest-gain, lowest-basis positions: hold until death if you can. The Section 1014 step-up erases the gain for your heirs. Gifting these forfeits the step-up.
• Moderate-gain positions: best candidates for lifetime gifts to adult children in low brackets, and for charitable gifts, which avoid the gain entirely.
• Loss positions: never gift these. The recipient's basis for loss purposes is the lower of your basis or fair market value at the gift date, so the loss can evaporate. Harvest the loss yourself and gift the cash.

Gifting appreciated stock does not remove it from gift tax accounting. A $100,000 stock gift uses your $19,000 annual exclusion and $81,000 of lifetime exemption per recipient per donor, exactly like cash. What changes is the income tax fate of the embedded gain. For a deeper treatment of the tax implications of gifting shares to family, the basis rules deserve their own reading.

What Is the Most Tax-Efficient Way to Distribute RMDs to Heirs?

The most tax-efficient strategy for heirs usually involves minimizing the size of future RMDs, not optimizing how you distribute them after the fact. Once a distribution has happened, it is fully taxed cash, and every downstream choice is second-order. The first-order levers are QCDs, Roth conversions before RMDs begin, and choosing which assets your heirs inherit versus receive during your life.

The inherited-account rules push the same direction. Under the SECURE Act's 10-year rule, most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited IRA within 10 years, and the IRS final regulations issued in July 2024 confirmed that beneficiaries of owners who died after their required beginning date must also take annual distributions during that window. A $5 million traditional IRA inherited by an adult child in her peak earning years gets compressed into a decade of distributions stacked on her own salary, much of it at 37%. Every dollar you convert to Roth or distribute charitably during your lifetime escapes that compression.

For Roth conversion opportunities after 60, the window between retirement and RMD commencement is often the most valuable planning period available.

Should High-Net-Worth Retirees Do Roth Conversions Before RMDs Begin?

For most FATFIRE households with large pre-tax IRA balances, yes. Converting during the years between retirement and your RMD start age shrinks the balance that generates mandatory distributions, fills tax brackets you would otherwise waste, and leaves your heirs a tax-free asset instead of a 10-year taxable drawdown. The tradeoff is paying known rates now versus unknown rates later, and for large balances the arithmetic usually favors now.

SECURE 2.0 Section 107 sets the RMD age at 73 for those born 1951 through 1959, rising to 75 for those born in 1960 or later. (The statute's drafting created ambiguity for 1959 births; IRS proposed regulations (July 2024) resolve it at 73.) A 62-year-old born in 1964 therefore has a 13-year conversion runway. If you retire at 60 with a $10 million IRA and do nothing, the Uniform Lifetime Table in Publication 590-B applies a factor of 24.6 at age 75, producing a first-year RMD of roughly $407,000 before any growth in the intervening 15 years. Let the balance compound at 7% to age 75 and the first RMD exceeds $1.1 million, all ordinary income, all feeding IRMAA.

The permanence of the $15 million exemption changed the urgency calculus but not the logic. The old 2025 deadline is gone, so conversions can be sized to brackets rather than to the calendar: fill the 24% bracket every year, consider the 32% bracket when the alternative is 37% RMDs later, and stop before triggering unnecessary IRMAA tiers.

The pro-rata rule under IRC Section 408(d) complicates this for anyone holding both pre-tax and after-tax IRA dollars. You cannot selectively convert the pre-tax portion; every conversion carries a proportional share of after-tax basis across all your IRAs. Model this before committing to a conversion schedule.

Should You Convert to Roth First or Gift First?

Convert first, gift second, when both compete for the same tax capacity. A Roth conversion consumes room in your income tax brackets, while annual exclusion gifts consume nothing: they are free of income tax, free of gift tax, and free of paperwork. The sequencing question only gets interesting for gifts large enough to consume lifetime exemption or assets that could fund either move.

Three sequencing principles cover most situations:

1. Never gift from the IRA's future. Cash you gift today is cash you cannot use to pay conversion taxes tomorrow. For a household with an eight-figure IRA, the highest-value use of taxable-account cash is usually paying conversion tax, because paying it from outside the IRA effectively shifts that money into a tax-free wrapper. Run the conversion plan through the current bracket-fill year before committing large discretionary gifts.

2. Gift assets you will not convert and will not step up. Moderate-gain taxable securities are ideal gift material precisely because they are bad conversion-tax fuel (selling triggers gains) and mediocre step-up candidates (the gain is too small to justify holding until death).

3. Coordinate the income effects. Conversions raise AGI, which raises IRMAA and can push capital gains from 15% into 20% plus NIIT territory. In heavy conversion years, gift appreciated stock rather than cash raised by selling stock, so realized gains do not stack on conversion income.

For optimal withdrawal strategies that sequence Roth conversions, RMDs, and taxable distributions, the order of operations matters as much as the amounts.

Can You Use Your RMD to Fund a 529 Plan for Grandchildren?

Yes, with no special rules required. Once you receive and pay tax on an RMD, the after-tax proceeds are ordinary cash, and you can contribute them to a 529 plan like any other funds. The income tax on the RMD is unavoidable, but the estate planning efficiency of the 529 contribution is real.

The relevant planning tool is the superfunding election under IRC Section 529(c)(2)(B). A contributor can front-load five years of annual exclusion gifts into a 529 in a single year without gift tax consequences. At the 2026 exclusion of $19,000, that means up to $95,000 per beneficiary from one grandparent, or $190,000 from a married couple, in a single contribution. The election is made on Form 709, and the contributor cannot make additional annual exclusion gifts to the same beneficiary during the five-year period.

For a grandparent couple with three grandchildren, a one-time superfunded contribution of $570,000 leaves the taxable estate immediately while compounding tax-free for education. Two additional mechanics favor grandparent-owned 529s. Distributions from grandparent-owned accounts no longer count as student income on the simplified FAFSA, removing the old financial aid penalty. And excess funds of up to $35,000 can move to the beneficiary's Roth IRA over their lifetime under SECURE 2.0, subject to a 15-year account age requirement and annual IRA contribution limits.

Which States Tax Estates, Inheritances, or Gifts in 2026?

Twelve states plus the District of Columbia levy their own estate tax in 2026, five states levy an inheritance tax on heirs, and Connecticut is the only state with its own gift tax. For households under the $15 million federal exemption, these state regimes are frequently the largest transfer tax exposure they actually face, and most kick in at thresholds a fraction of the federal one.

State estate tax exemptions and top rates for 2026:

Sources: state revenue departments, including the New York Department of Taxation and Finance and Washington Department of Revenue; compiled rates via Wealthspire's 2026 federal and state estate tax reference.

Inheritance tax states, taxing the recipient based on relationship: Kentucky (4% to 16%), Maryland (10%), Nebraska (1% to 15%), New Jersey (11% to 16%), and Pennsylvania (4.5% for children, 12% for siblings, 15% for others). Iowa's inheritance tax is fully repealed for deaths on or after January 1, 2025. Spouses are exempt everywhere, and children are exempt or lightly taxed in most, with Pennsylvania and Nebraska the notable exceptions for lineal heirs.

Two traps deserve specific attention. New York has a cliff: an estate exceeding 105% of the exemption (about $7.72 million in 2026) loses the entire exclusion and pays tax from dollar one, and New York adds back taxable gifts made within three years of death. Second, the rule that makes lifetime gifting powerful: because only Connecticut taxes lifetime gifts, a Massachusetts or Oregon resident can gift assets during life and remove them entirely from the state estate tax base. A $4 million lifetime gifting program for a Boston household is worth up to roughly $640,000 in avoided Massachusetts estate tax at the 16% top rate, independent of anything federal.

If your domicile is flexible, which column of this table you die in matters more than most portfolio decisions. Thirty-four states impose neither tax.

How RMD Strategies Change When You Have a $5 Million or Larger IRA

At this balance level, the standard retail guidance stops being useful, because the annual exclusion arithmetic that dominates generic advice cannot keep pace with the account's own growth.

Current thresholds at a glance:

With a $10 million IRA and an RMD age of 73, your first-year RMD is roughly $377,000 ($10,000,000 divided by the age-73 factor of 26.5 from Publication 590-B). The $111,000 QCD limit covers under 30% of that; the remainder hits your 1040 as ordinary income. That reality makes pre-RMD Roth conversions, charitable remainder structures, and coordinated gifting from taxable accounts the primary tools.

State income tax adds another layer. California's top bracket takes 13.3% of every RMD dollar, New York's 10.9%, Massachusetts 9% above the millionaire-surtax threshold. For retirees with domicile flexibility, relocating before RMDs begin can save seven figures over a 20-year distribution period, and the state estate tax table above often points to the same move.

What Does a Coordinated Plan Look Like for a $10 Million Household?

Consider a married couple, both born in 1953 and turning 73 in 2026, with $7 million in one spouse's traditional IRA, $2.5 million in a taxable brokerage account holding $1.2 million of unrealized long-term gains, and $500,000 in cash. Three adult children, four grandchildren, charitably inclined, resident in Massachusetts. Here is one coherent year-one plan using the 2026 numbers verified above.

Income tax layer. The first-year RMD is $7,160,000 / 26.5 = $264,151. They direct $111,000 to charity as a QCD, executed before any other distribution, dropping taxable RMD income to $153,151. At a combined federal and Massachusetts marginal rate of about 41%, the QCD saves roughly $45,500 versus taking the full RMD and writing checks to the same charities, without engaging the new 0.5% AGI floor on itemized charitable deductions. The lower AGI also holds their 2028 Medicare premiums a tier down.

Family transfer layer. Each spouse gifts $19,000 to each of the three children and their three spouses or partners: $38,000 to six recipients, $228,000 total, zero gift tax, zero Form 709, funded with appreciated index fund shares rather than cash. The children, in the 15% capital gains bracket, sell with a 15% haircut on gains the parents would have realized at 23.8% with NIIT. For the four grandchildren, ages 6 through 14, the couple superfunds 529 plans at $190,000 each: $760,000 removed from the estate in one transaction, reported on Form 709 with the five-year election.

Estate layer. Their $10 million estate is nowhere near the $30 million federal exemption, but Massachusetts starts taxing at $2 million with a top rate of 16%. The year-one transfers move $988,000 out of the Massachusetts estate tax base immediately. Repeated annually and left to compound in the recipients' hands, the program plausibly moves $4 million or more over a decade, avoiding up to $640,000 of state estate tax, while the lowest-basis brokerage positions stay put, earmarked for the Section 1014 step-up.

What they deliberately do not do: gift RMD cash for tax reasons (there are none), gift their lowest-basis stock (step-up is worth more), convert to Roth at 73 with a $264,000 RMD already stacking the brackets (though partial conversions in the 24% bracket may still pencil), or move gains-heavy assets to the 14-year-old (kiddie tax).

Total first-year movement: $111,000 to charity untaxed, $988,000 to the next two generations, roughly $47,000 of combined income tax and future Medicare cost avoided. None of it required a trust, an appraisal, or a single exotic structure.

Gifting RMD to Family: Coordinating with Estate and Trust Planning

For estates approaching or exceeding the federal exemption, or sitting above a state threshold, RMD gifting does not exist in isolation. It is one component of a broader distribution and transfer strategy.

Trust-based distribution strategies interact with RMD planning in specific ways. Naming a trust as an IRA beneficiary requires careful drafting to qualify as a see-through trust under the SECURE Act regime, and even then most trust beneficiaries are subject to the 10-year payout. For FATFIRE households considering dynasty trust structures, this is a material constraint: retirement accounts are generally the worst assets to route through multigenerational trusts and the best assets to consume, convert, or give to charity during life.

Early gifting strategies funded by RMD proceeds can be structured through irrevocable trusts, GRATs, or outright transfers depending on the asset and the recipient. The key distinction remains: RMD cash carries no special tax attributes after distribution. It is after-tax money, and the transfer vehicle should be chosen on estate planning merits, not on any assumption that the RMD origin creates special treatment.

Managing beneficiary designations on retirement accounts is a parallel priority. The 10-year rule, now with mandatory annual distributions for most beneficiaries when the owner died on or after the required beginning date under the 2024 final regulations, compresses a large inherited traditional IRA into your children's peak earning years. Lifetime Roth conversions turn that problem into a tax-free 10-year compounding window instead.

For creative inheritance planning approaches that coordinate retirement accounts, taxable assets, and trust structures, the question of which assets transfer at death versus during life is often the highest-value planning decision available.

A Practical Framework for Gifting RMD Funds to Family

Pull these threads together into a working decision sequence:

Step 1: Maximize QCDs first. If you have charitable intent, direct up to $111,000 per spouse annually to qualified charities via QCD before taking any other distribution. This is the only RMD mechanism that reduces your AGI, and the 2026 charitable deduction floor makes it strictly better than donating cash.

Step 2: Model Roth conversions for the remaining pre-RMD years. If you have not reached your RMD age (73 for those born 1951-1959, 75 for 1960 and later), the gap between now and commencement is your conversion window. Size conversions to brackets, not deadlines; the exemption sunset that used to force the calendar is gone.

Step 3: Gift appreciated taxable assets to family, not RMD cash. Use RMD proceeds for living expenses and reinvestment. Gift moderate-gain securities to adult children who can realize gains at 0% or 15%, keep the lowest-basis lots for the step-up, never gift loss positions.

Step 4: Use annual exclusion gifts systematically. At $19,000 per recipient in 2026, a couple with five recipients moves $190,000 annually with no filing. Over 10 years that is $1.9 million plus growth out of the estate, which matters most in the 13 jurisdictions with their own estate tax.

Step 5: Superfund 529 plans for grandchildren. $95,000 per beneficiary per grandparent ($190,000 per couple) in a single year, with favorable FAFSA treatment for grandparent-owned accounts and a Roth escape hatch for overfunding.

Step 6: Check your state before your federal exemption. With the federal exemption permanent at $15 million per person, state estate and inheritance taxes are the binding constraint for most readers. Lifetime gifting escapes every state regime except Connecticut's, and domicile remains the single largest lever for those willing to move.

For a full picture of understanding RMD requirements and how distribution amounts are calculated, the Uniform Lifetime Table in Publication 590-B governs the math.

Sources

• Internal Revenue Service, "IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026" (annual gift exclusion $19,000; estate basic exclusion $15,000,000; 37% bracket thresholds; non-citizen spouse exclusion $194,000).
• Internal Revenue Service, "Revenue Procedure 2025-32" (full 2026 inflation adjustments, including kiddie tax threshold and capital gains brackets).
• Internal Revenue Service, "Notice 2025-67" (2026 QCD limit $111,000; one-time split-interest QCD $55,000).
• Internal Revenue Service, "Publication 590-B: Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements" (RMD rules, Uniform Lifetime Table).
• U.S. Code, "26 U.S.C. § 408(d)(8): Qualified Charitable Distributions".
• U.S. Code, "26 U.S.C. § 1014: Basis of Property Acquired from a Decedent".
• U.S. Code, "26 U.S.C. § 529: Qualified Tuition Programs".
• U.S. Congress, "H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Public Law 119-21" (permanent $15 million exemption; charitable deduction floor and cap).
• U.S. Congress, "SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, Division T of Public Law 117-328, Section 107" (RMD ages 73 and 75).
• Federal Register, "Required Minimum Distributions: Final Regulations, July 19, 2024" (10-year rule annual distribution requirement; 1959 birth-year resolution).
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "2026 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums and Deductibles" (Part B premium $202.90; IRMAA thresholds and surcharges).
• New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, "Estate Tax" (2026 basic exclusion $7,350,000; cliff mechanics).
• Washington State Department of Revenue, "Estate Tax" (2026 exclusion amounts and rate schedule).
• Wealthspire Advisors, "2026 Federal and State Estate and Gift Tax Cheat Sheet" (compiled state estate and inheritance tax exemptions and rates).
• Internal Revenue Service, "Frequently Asked Questions on Gift Taxes" (annual exclusion mechanics, Form 709 requirements).
• Internal Revenue Service, "Topic No. 553, Tax on a Child's Investment and Other Unearned Income (Kiddie Tax)".