The dust has begun to settle after the election - and both the legislative and executive branches are controlled by the Democratic Party. If Obama’s estate tax plan becomes law, the $3.5 million exemption of 2009 would be retained, but amounts in excess of that would be taxed at 45%. The top tax rates of [...]

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Barack Obama has aired a new ad accusing John McCain of favoring offshore asset protection trusts that operate as tax shelters in Bermuda. McCain is alleged to have taken $50,000 while on a lobbyist supported vacation from those who have benefited from the trusts. You can see the ad here, courtesy of the [...]

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In a previous article, “Eight Signs Your California Tax Shelter or Offshore Asset Protection Trust Is Actually Tax Evasion,” I pointed out that several partners were in trouble at Arnold and Porter for promoting abusive tax shelters. The current state of charges, indictments, and investigations against other firms are almost too numerous to count.
Indictments [...]

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Now that the big accounting firms have been stung by IRS investigations, indictments, and convictions of the promoters of off the shelf tax shelters (like the POPS, PICOs, and FOCUS of Arnold and Porter), they have largely stopped offering speculative “investments” and offshore asset protection trusts. Now “a few smaller accounting and regional law [...]

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Asset protection may come in many forms, but what if your tax shelter was built by God? That is the claim of an Iowa resident who believes he resides in heaven, the ultimate off-shore asset protection trust. The man’s logic seems to be that heaven is not within the jurisdictional reach of the [...]

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“Most people don’t realize that we have two systems of taxation. One taxes income as it’s earned; the other taxes wealth as it changes hands. During a person’s lifetime, we call this transfer tax the gift tax. At his or her death, we call it the estate tax, and it could carry significant tax consequences [...]

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L.A. Times - Personal Finance

“You may not like paying federal taxes, but chances are you’re not going to renounce your U.S. citizenship to get out of the obligation.
That’s probably wise, especially because a tax bill expected to be signed into law this week contains a provision designed to crack down on the roughly 500 rich [...]

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L.A. Times - Personal Finance: “What does the housing slump mean for all of those seniors who took out reverse mortgages? And what does it mean for their heirs? My mother is 78 and fortunately has not had to go down that path (yet). But many of her friends have. I just haven’t seen [...]

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From the article:
A similar approach led Kelly Bedard and Olivier Deschenes to a rather striking conclusion: divorce may not be financially harmful to women. They find that divorce actually led women to live in households with greater income per person. (To be more precise, they argue that the marginal divorces caused by the [...]

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The article includes a link which provides excellent advice for those in San Diego considering estate planning for non-married couples and domestic partners.

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What is estate planning? Find some answers in this article.
The following is from Ian Driscoll: Parents must put children in the know, us.ft.com, Mar 24 2008:

“Tax planning is a very important part of estate planning; sometimes the only part,” says Susan Schoenfeld, principal and associate fiduciary counsel at New York-based Bessemer Trust. “But it shouldn’t [...]

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Nearly 50 million Americans do it. But once you see how, you’ll be glad you’re not one of them.
(Money Magazine) — You’ve tried staring your computer down, but it’s not blinking. No matter how many times you go over the figures, you get the same answer. That number on your screen - [...]

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