As more states legalize cannabis sales, estate planners may increasingly be called upon to advise clients with interests in cannabis-related businesses. This essay seeks assist estate planners in two ways. First, it aims to raise general awareness of cannabis business owners’ unique concerns....

This article explores the income tax consequences of the sale during lifetime and at death of property for less than fair market value. The analysis focuses in particular on the tax consequences of a bargain sale by a transferor who wishes to confer some financial benefit on a family member, but...

The changes in the progressive tax structure over the past decades have greatly reduced the tax incentive to divert income from a taxpayer with substantial income to a trust or its beneficiaries. As a result, although grantor trusts were once avoided, the "intentional grantor trust" has become a...

Taxpayers sometimes die with a right to gross income that has not been received at the time of death and is not re-portable on the decedent's final or other pre-death income tax return, that is, with an entitlement to items of "income in respect of a decedent" (IRD). An estate with charitable...

The IRS has struggled to close down abusive family limited partnerships. At first unreceptive to IRS arguments, the courts eventually embraced section 2036 as an estate-tax tool for attacking such partnerships. Because the section was not designed to apply to partnerships, difficulties have...

In this article, the authors discuss Rev. Proc. 2014-18, in which the IRS provides some estates with a simplified method for making a portability election and having that election treated as timely even though the statutory deadline may have passed. The authors suggest that once the estate tax...

The “Delaware Tax Trap” of Internal Revenue Code §2041(a)(3) historically was a provision to be avoided but it can be a useful means of incurring estate tax rather than a more expensive generation-skipping transfer tax in situations in which the beneficiary should decide which tax to incur....

In this article, the authors review the income tax treatment of prizes and awards in the context of Dr. Ralph Steinman who died in 2011 before being named a Nobel Laureate in Medicine. The Nobel Committee has announced that it intends to pay the prize money to Dr. Steinman's estate. Should this...

This article provides an overview of the U.S. estate tax rules that apply to nonresidents who are not U.S.citizens. The long arm of the U.S. federal estate tax extends to individuals who have assets located in the United States even if the individual is neither a resident nor a citizen of the...

The untimely death of Michael Jackson this past June presents an opportunity to reassess certain thorny estate tax issues that may arise when a celebrity dies owning valuable intellectual property. Elsewhere we have debated hypothetical, tax-motivated changes to state laws relating to postmortem...