PDF of this report (7pp.) The estate tax is a tax on property (cash, real estate, stock, or other assets) transferred from deceased persons to their heirs. Only the wealthiest estates in the country pay the tax because it is levied only on the portion of an estate’s value that exceeds a specified exemption level, currently $5.25 million per person (effectively $10.5 million per married couple). The estate tax thus limits, to a modest degree, the large tax breaks that extremely wealthy households get on their wealth as it grows, which can otherwise go completely untaxed. Though the estate tax…
The recovery in the U.S. state pension system suffered a setback in 2012 as the huge funding shortfall in a large swath of state pensions swelled more than 20 percent, interrupting two years of improvement following the devastation of the financial crisis. The shortfall in 109 of the nation's state pension plans, which guarantee retirement for millions of public workers such as police, firefighters, and teachers, rose to $834.2 billion in 2012, up from $690.3 billion the previous year, according to a new report by Wilshire Consulting, a unit of independent investment management firm Wilshire Associates. The report highlights the…
The Internal Revenue Service has a low-profile but sweeping effort under way to use state land-transfer records for evidence of omissions in reporting gifts of real estate to family members. New tax rules make big gifts to family members popular this year. If you made a gift of real estate (or are considering making one) be warned – the IRS is scrutinizing land-transfer records looking for folks who may have made a reporting error. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the IRS has begun requesting state land-transfer records and checking them against reports of the past few years to find…
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