Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about charitable giving and estate planning ideas. Many taxpayers created irrevocable trusts and transferred significant ...

If you manage an irrevocable trust or are considering creating one, recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) changes may directly affect your estate planning. A new regulation modifies how the step-up in ...

With the federal estate tax exemption at historically high levels, most family farms are no longer at risk of paying federal ...

With the recent increase of the 2026 federal estate and gift tax exemption to an unprecedented and astounding $15 million per person (a whopping $30 million for married couples), the necessity of ...

Tucked away in the American Families Plan, is a proposal to change the way capital gains taxes are paid on estates when people pass away. This seemingly small revision to a tax rule called stepped up ...

For the better part of the past 100 years, the basis of an inherited asset is raised—stepped up, as it were—to the asset’s fair market value at the time of the original owner’s death. So let’s say you ...