Natural Resources Endure Shorter Recessionary Bust
June 4, 2010
Resource investors were not immune to the pain of the latest recession, but, for them, it was more like tearing off a Band-Aid than slowly peeling one away. The S&P Global 1200, a stock index providing a reliable measure of worldwide equity markets, peaked on Oct. 31, 2007. We all know what happened next: financial crisis, fear and economic decline. The bottom for global equities, or at least what we …
Don’t Let A ‘Crummey’ Mistake Ruin Your Trust
June 4, 2010Imagine paying your attorney a small fortune to draft your trust documents, only to have the Internal Revenue Service attack your gifting plan to the trust years later. Some taxpayers find themselves in this unfortunate situation when it comes to the common, yet often mishandled, area of Crummey withdrawal powers. What Are Crummey Powers? Many estate plans call for annual gifts to heirs, often through trusts. To be eligible for …
Duly Noted
June 4, 2010New York Steps Up Search For Residents To Tax. Already one of the most aggressive states when it comes to classifying people with multiple homes as residents subject to its taxes, New York has issued new audit guidelines promising even tougher enforcement. Agents were told to consider the location of close relatives outside the taxpayer’s household, such as grandchildren or elderly parents, as one of the primary factors in determining …
Republicans See More Leverage Next Year
April 5, 2010
Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from columns that appeared in the Current Commentary section of our Web site, www.palisadeshudson.com, on Feb. 17 and Feb. 24. We invite readers to subscribe to our daily commentaries via email and Twitter, and to submit responses online or via email to sentinel@palisadeshudson.com. Despite the problems stemming from the one-year lapse of the estate tax that Eric Meermann describes in this issue’s cover story, …
Palisades Hudson in the News
April 5, 2010Professionals from Palisades Hudson have recently been quoted as experts in a variety of media outlets. Here are a few highlights: In a lengthy Q&A in BusinessWeek, Jonathan Bergman, vice president, explained the temporary absence of the estate tax this year as a result of Congress’s failure to address a sunset provision in the Bush-era tax laws (which Eric Meermann discusses in our story on page 1). Jonathan also laid …
Duly Noted
April 5, 2010Team Wins As IRS Changes Its Mind. Perseverance is one of the keys to success on the playing field, and in the front office, too. An unidentified professional sports team recently persuaded the Internal Revenue Service to change its mind, allowing the team to deduct salary payments to a disabled player even though the team collected tax-free disability insurance proceeds on account of the player’s injury. The Chief Counsel’s office …
Does That Pricey College Pay Off?
April 5, 2010Investing in a college education pays big lifetime dividends, with college graduates generally earning far more than high school graduates. And some studies find that, after factoring in potentially higher costs, diplomas from the most prestigious institutions may be worth even more. Mark Schneider, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a political science professor at SUNY Stony Brook, compares lifetime earnings of college …
Estate Planning For 2010 And Beyond
March 3, 2010
Almost no one believed it would happen, but here we are: For the first time since 1915, the United States has no federal estate tax. Congressional action nine years ago created the potential for this situation, and congressional inaction last year made it happen. At the 44th annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, which I recently attended, many of the planners present were worried about their jobs. Not us. The …
Onerous New State Tax Rules
February 1, 2010Oregon shed its fierce anti-tax reputation last month by doing something rarely seen — it voted for higher taxes. Facing a budget deficit of more than $700 million, Oregonians passed two proposals that tied them with Hawaii for the highest personal income tax rate in the nation and gave them the highest capital gains tax and corporate minimum tax. Oregon’s plight was not unique, although most states have not left …
Should You Do A Roth IRA Conversion?
February 1, 2010The federal government may have given you the opportunity to save tens or even hundreds of thousands of tax dollars — if you’re willing to deal with some complexity. Will you take advantage of it? Beginning this year, all taxpayers will be allowed to convert their traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs, regardless of their income levels. With tax rates already scheduled to increase in 2011 and the possibility of additional …
