A Proliferation of Ways to Use a Tax Break as Its End Nears

Excerpt from: The New York Times (click for full article)

 

Holiday shoppers and tax filers are known for procrastinating. This year, they’re joined by the wealthy who have still not decided whether to make a gift under a generous gift tax exemption that may soon disappear.

Now, with a little more than two weeks left in the year, tax lawyers and advisers say the wealthy are scrambling to make gifts before the exemption expires.

“We are having this come up daily,” said Mitchell A. Drossman, national director of wealth planning strategies for U.S. Trust. “One of the first things I’m asking is, ‘Why are they warming up to this idea now? Is it that they didn’t want to make the gift? They didn’t know how? They didn’t get around to it?’ ”

With so little time left, advisers have come up with quick and easy ways to get the gift done for tax purposes this year.