Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s estate tax avoidance plan may be a contradiction.
The Clintons have placed their New York home in residence trusts while Hillary Clinton calls for higher estate taxes, according to the Daily Mail in “Hillary and Bill Clinton dodge ‘death tax’ by putting their New York home into trust – despite presidential candidate’s efforts to make the wealthiest pay more.”
The wealthy can learn from Bill and Hillary Clinton on how to protect their wealth from the estate tax. That they have done so is not new information, but it is receiving more attention as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency heats up and as she is calling for an increase in the estate tax.
What the Clintons have done is to place their New York home in residence trusts. As a result, any increase in the value of the home is outside of their estates and therefore not subject to the estate tax. In the process, most of the home’s value will not be used by the IRS to determine the taxable size of the Clinton’s estates.
Whether or not this is hypocritical given Clinton’s stated plans to lower the estate tax exemption is for voters to decide.
The lesson that wealthy people can learn from this is that there are ways to lower the estate tax burden on estates. The Clintons have done so in one way, but there are others.
Reference: Daily Mail (May 23, 2016) “Hillary and Bill Clinton dodge ‘death tax’ by putting their New York home into trust – despite presidential candidate’s efforts to make the wealthiest pay more.”
