Taxation of estates & trusts

State law is applied to determine whether a transferee is liable for a transferor’s tax liability. The Tax Court held that four trusts were not required to pay their former personal holding company’s tax liability. Virginia state law does not contain a corollary to the federal substance-over-form doctrine, and federal

Controversial rules prompted by the Knight decision parse certain income tax deductions of estates and trusts. The IRS issued final regulations on the controversial question of which costs incurred by trusts and estates are subject to the 2% floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions under Sec. 67(a). The regulations apply to

The Tax Court held that a gift’s fair market value (FMV) may be determined with reference to the recipient’s assumption of the potential Sec. 2035(b) estate tax liability, abandoning its precedent from McCord, 120 T.C. 358 (2003). Jean Steinberg, who was 89, entered into a binding agreement with her four

The Tax Court held that the duty-of-consistency doctrine prevented two taxpayers from using fair market value (FMV) as the basis of inherited property where the estate had previously valued the property using the special valuation election of Sec. 2032A. The value of property included in a decedent’s estate is its

A district court held that an estate’s remittance to the IRS was a tax payment rather than a deposit. It denied the estate’s refund request because it occurred after the three-year recovery period had expired. Generally, a taxpayer must request a refund of a tax overpayment within three years from

The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), P.L. 104-199, is unconstitutional because it violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by denying equal protection to same-sex couples who are lawfully married in their states (Windsor, No. 12-307