Tax Department

• Income Splitting--permanent and temporary asset transfers to minor children, college bound, and other trusts or entities with a lower tax bracket than your own personal bracket.

• Family members on your payroll--earned income can be taxed at their tax bracket when it is lower than yours.

• Qualified Savings Plans--maximizing the amount of tax deductible savings for yourself and your family members is an often under utilized or overlooked area within one's affairs. Often existing plans are substandard in terms of their structure and/or performance.

• Tax Deferral--"Never pay taxes on money you don't use" is an axiom many have found to be successful. If you have personal savings or investments generating too much taxable income perhaps you should consider tax deferred investments. 

• Tax Free Investing--Current law allows certain types of bonds and life insurance products to generate income which can be received tax free.

• Tax Free Exchanges--Depreciated real estate and even annuity and insurance contracts can be stepped up into more attractive investment programs without any taxation when done properly.

• Tax Deductions--There are a host of strategies and techniques aimed at generating tax deductions to offset your taxable income and thereby reduce your income tax. They include Family Foundations and  Charitable Remainder Trusts, as well as certain Congressionally sanctioned investment tax incentives.

• Lump Sum Distributions/IRA Rollovers.When you have worked hard all your life accumulating a retirement nest egg it is extremely important that you avoid potential pitfalls when you retire or change employers.  Many people fail to realize all the tax and income options available to them and otherwise miss out on excellent options to enhance the impact of their 401k or IRA rollovers.

Estate Department

• The Federal Estate Tax is probably the most confiscatory tax in the modern history of taxation. Without proper effective estate planning, the wealth accumulated throughout your family generations to date could be decimated. Therefore the following estate planning techniques are considered very carefully and employed within the context of all the varied objectives of your own unique set of financial circumstances. We work with and help coordinate a number of attorneys who specialize in this field of work at a reasonable cost.

• Testamentary Trust--perhaps the simplest, least expensive and most effective way to maximize your claim to two Unified Credits thereby claiming all your available estate tax exemption amounts without gifting.

• Marital or A-B Trust--has the same estate tax impact as the Testamentary Trust but also eliminates probate when done correctly.
• Living Trust--another version of the Marital or A-B Trust but here there can be reasons to actually support two separately written trust documents and entities created from the outset.

• Irrevocable Trusts--when your estate grows beyond the available exemptions these are the next step. Also life insurance is commonly owned within this trust so as not to gross up an already large estate even further.  Life insurance proceeds can pass to heirs free of any and all tax.

• Private Family Foundations-One of the simplest and least expensive ways to achieve a host of objectives is with a family foundation.

• Charitable Remainder Trusts-If you have a genuine interest in benefiting a charitable cause or organization and you have income tax or estate tax problems then these may be for you.

• Estate Freezes--there are number of methods used to freeze the future growth on the large estate and instead ascribe that prospective growth to another individual or entity without adding to your tax problems.

• GRIT--Grantor Retained Income Trusts. Appreciating assets are transferred to this trust. You retain the control and the needed income from the trusts assets but the future growth goes to the trusts beneficiaries.

• Family Limited Partnership--Similar to the GRIT but has the added advantage of earning a significant additional estate valuation discount under current law. This can spell an immediate estate tax savings while keeping all your hard earned assets in the family.