LIFE
The Zero Estate Tax Plan: The Cure For Planning Fatigue Life insurance is the bedrock of a plan to provide funds to charity while giving cash to clients’ beneficiaries. By James Cassidy and Ron Sussman
A
famous quote says: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If this is true, and we do believe it is, then the ever-changing estate planning landscape for high net worth clients is insane. Estate planning is, by definition, a long bet with an uncertain outcome, made riskier by employing tax strategies that work only if today’s laws remain unchanged. Which, in itself, is a rarity. Planning for the disposition of your client’s highly appreciated assets is really more of an exercise in futility, since there is no way to know when or whether the tax laws will change or be abolished. This is convenient if you charge for advice, 42
since there is very rarely a time when the tax laws are not in flux. But it can be very frustrating to clients who are trying to achieve a specific outcome. Take, for example, the rules under Internal Revenue Code Section 1031. If your tax planning involves serial 1031 tax-free exchanges, you may be in the crosshairs of the Biden administration’s efforts to curb perceived “abuses” of this perfectly legal tax benefit. And although it’s usually the abusers of any strategy that draw the most attention, everyone else who attempted to follow the rules will likely suffer. Just look at this abbreviated list of solutions offered by creative estate planning practitioners: CRUT, CLAT, GRAT, GRUT, CLT, CRT, FLP, QPRT, QTIP, QDOT, SCINS, SLAT, etc. I’m sure you’ll find one or more that your clients are using. These are just a few of the creative acronyms used to describe sometimes wildly complicated tax strategies that may or may not ultimately provide shelter from what many advisors perceive as avoidable taxation. Also, most high net worth
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » September 2021
clients will cycle through many iterations of these over their lifetime, always trying to stay one step ahead of the IRS. It is not unusual to find clients who are trying to use or terminate trusts that were drafted decades ago, and cannot find the trust deed or it’s drafter, leaving them in limbo with assets that may be owned by an obsolete trust. It is equally common to find that the initial trustee is not a person with whom the grantor currently has a relationship — or even worse, has fallen out with. How do you solve some of these issues with trusts that are, in many cases, deemed “irrevocable”? What we are noticing is that this endless cycle of chasing the tax law has become exhausting for clients who are lately becoming all too aware of the fees associated with maintaining them. Clients are exhibiting planning fatigue, the result of which is frozen indecision, the worst of all decisions. What if you could solve most of these issues with one extremely simple strategy that relies on only two of the most sacrosanct of all tax laws: The deductibility of contributions to a qualified charity and the tax-free receipt of life insurance death proceeds? This strategy is one of the most underutilized, simple and efficient of all, and has been effective for as long as our tax code has been in existence. It can serve as a place holder for future planning, or function as the entire estate plan. It requires only a minimal amount of “planning” and can, when implemented correctly, eliminate all estate taxes and leave heirs with a pre-determined tax-free gift of cash. The Zero Estate Tax Plan is something that dovetails nicely with an idea that was pioneered decades ago by a firm specializing in charitable planning. That idea, referred to as social engineering, assumes that families with significant wealth should be able to direct their tax dollars to causes they support and want to foster, rather than allow the government to make that decision for them. Essentially, by leaving your estate to charity you deny the government the estate tax (and other taxes that could be due) by leaving 100% of the estate to qualified 501(c)(3) charities. Of course, the idea of leaving your entire estate to charity is a tough one to sell. Most families want their heirs to
