Recently in Estate Tax Category

All those Mayan predictions about the end of the world in 2012, were, it turns out, warnings about the massive cataclysms that would affect the estate tax arena in 2012.

How do we know? Because after 2012 estate tax will not be the same, reports Fidelity. Consider the following:

For 2012, the current law provides a generous $5,120,000 per person federal estate tax exemption and taxes estates over that amount at a top rate of 35%. This compares with a $1 million per person federal estate tax exemption and a 55% effective top tax rate scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2013.

The federal estate tax is imposed on estates exceeding $5 million. And once you’ve got estates of that size, many people become inclined to find ways to reduce their estate tax.

The researchers at FindLaw, while no replacement for a qualified New York estate planning attorney, have put together a list of some general ideas on strategies for reducing estate tax. Five of these estate tax reduction strategies are:

Did Penn State football's celebrated and controversial recently departed head coach, Joe Paterno, make an estate tax mistake before his death, wonders Forbes?

To identify Joe Paterno's estate tax mistake, Forbes looks back to the much discussed Joe Paterno house sale for $1, as previously reviewed on FindLaw's New York Estate Planning News.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor currently running for the GOP nomination for president, has often been confronted with the question of his wealth. This includes both what he made at the corporate firm Bain Consulting, and what he may have inherited from his father, George Romney, who was the CEO of American Motors Company and a governor of Michigan.

With respect to Mitt Romney's inheritance, Mother Jones recently reported an interesting nugget of information. It turns out that in an earlier interview with Reuters, Mitt Romney made an telling remark:

People leaving behind large estates are always searching for good ways to lower the estate tax and FindLaw's New York Estate Planning Blog is often writing about such subjects.

One way to lower your estate tax is through carefully transferring your life insurance policy.

If you transfer your life insurance policy away before your death, the insurance proceeds at your death are someone else's property and will not be included in the total value of your estate.

If you are a millionaire and were planning to die on December 31, 2011, you may want to wait till January 1, 2012, so your heirs can get an extra $120,000 in estate tax exemptions, reports Forbes. Yes, these days there is strategy even in dying.

According to Forbes there are some real benefits:

In the midst of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State some people pointed to head football coach Joe Paterno’s sale of his house to his wife for $1 as possible evidence of the 84-year-old coach’s culpability.

But what if the Joe Paterno house sale for $1 had more to do with estate tax, asks the New York Times.

Whispering about the house started when people learned that the home worth nearly $600,000 had been sold to Joe Paterno’s wife for $1. Speculation was rife with the idea that Paterno had sold the house because he expected personal injury lawsuits from sex abuse victims of his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

As we begin to look forward to the end of another year, many people think about reorganizing their lives and about planning for the future. For some, estate planning is part of this. A major part of estate planning is always developing an understanding of your potential tax liability.

The federal estate tax which is imposed on estates exceeding $5 million can be reduced through various estate planning techniques. The following is a list of ten methods you may want to think about as ways to reduce your estate taxes:

You may have heard that you do not owe federal estate tax unless your estate is worth more than $5,000,000, but do you really know what this means?

Computing whether you owe federal estate taxes can be a complicated endeavor and you should work with an estate planning attorney if you are unsure; however, the following provides a summary on determining when you might owe federal estate taxes.

When an individual dies, not all of the estate is passed onto the heirs. Instead, in many cases, as much as half the estate will pass onto the state and federal tax man.

Under federal laws, the estate tax is somewhat lenient -- individuals can generally bequeath up to $5 million of their assets tax free. But just because you don't own $5 million in assets, does not mean you will avoid the tax man completely. Instead, New Yorkers must file state estate taxes even if they meet a far lower threshold.

The following are three questions often asked about the New York Estate tax.