Preservation | Family Wealth Protection & Planning

The Trump Administration, along with the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means, on Sept. 27, 2017, released the “Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code.” The framework is a consolidation of earlier proposals including the 2018 budget plan and the one-page memo previously released, as well as the Tax Reform Tax Force Blueprint released by House Republicans in 2016.

In many cases, determining the beneficiaries of your estate plan is simple. If your spouse survives you, your assets go to your spouse. If your spouse doesn’t survive you, your assets are split equally among your children. But choosing who will ultimately receive your assets and in what proportions is only part of the process. Another part of it is deciding how the beneficiaries receive those assets.

The Internal Revenue Service has released the Applicable Federal Rates (AFRs) for October 2017. AFRs are published monthly and represent the minimum interest rates that should be charged for family loans to avoid tax complications.

Here are the rates for October 2017:

Bloomberg BNA has released its U.S. tax rate projections for 2018, which can be found here.

There are two very important changes expected that will impact estate planning in the coming year. BNA is projecting that the annual gift tax exclusion will rise from $14,000 to $15,000. This means individuals and married couples will be able to transfer more wealth, tax free, each year. This change is particularly important for trusts funded annually with an amount equal to the gift tax exclusion.