Generally speaking, where property is directly transferred upon death to the deceased’s spouse or common-law partner or a trust for their benefit, such transfers are automatically transferred at cost amount or tax cost amount pursuant to the provisions of the Income Tax Act and no taxable gains on the transfer are incurred. However, there may good reason to elect out of these provisions to trigger taxable capital gains.
In my Blog of October 26, 2010, I described how the U.S. estate tax regime was in a state of flux. Without action by Congress before the end of 2010, U.S. estate taxes are set to revert back to the rates and exempt amount in effect in 2001.
When siblings fight. One adult child is asked to be POA for finance and one for care. So what happens when they disagree? This can be further complicated when two POA’s are appointed jointly.
The need for reform of the Subsitute Decisions Act.
There are lessons for everyone in the way the rich focus on long-term financial planning and wealth transfer.
A testator excludes his 4 adult daughters from his estate, leaving everything to his son. A B.C. court effectively redistributes the estate equally between the testator’s children. Can this happen in Ontario too?
Much has been written by the contributors to this blog about the various taxes arising in the year of death. As a tax adviser I will look for a way to either reduce the final tax or, at a minimum, defer some of the final tax to a later time. One such way of deferring the tax arising on death is for the executor to make one final registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) contribution for the year in which a person has died.
Further to my colleague Corina Weigl’s discussion of U.S. estate taxes, I thought readers might be interested in a U.S. constitutional litigation that has been launched in response to the U.S. estate tax burden borne by the survivor of a same-sex marriage.
The RCMP say that seniors are particularly susceptible to telephone fraud because their generation tends to be more trusting and less likely to hang up the telephone on someone who appears to be very friendly. How many magazine subscriptions do you have?
A review of abatement and how it can affect estate planning.
