Surgent's Successfully Completing a Gift Tax Return -- Form 709

Overview

Since the early 2000s, the estate tax burden on taxpayers has gradually decreased along with the number of practitioners specializing in the field. Nevertheless, some of your most wealthy clients will have a taxable estate. For these select clients, making large gifts before death can be extremely tax efficient for the client and profitable for the practitioner filing the gift tax return. Learning how to file a basic gift tax return can help you attract and retain clients, increase your value-add, and generate revenue.

Prerequisites

Basic understanding of federal income and transfer taxes

Objectives

• Understand how to file a simple gift tax return

Highlights

• Taxpayers who do not file gift tax returns but should
• The annual exclusion rules for gifts to trusts including required Crummey notices
• What should be disclosed on the return for purposes of running the statute of limitations
• The reporting of installment sales and split-interest
• Valuations and valuation discounts for gifts of closely held businesses
• The utilization of Generation Skipping Transfer Tax and the related automatic allocation rules
• Reporting the use of a deceased spouse’s unused exclusion exemption amount (DSUEA)
• A line-by-line explanation of Form 709