2024 Field Guide to Estate Planning

The 2024 Field Guide to Estate & Retirement Planning, Business Planning & Employee Benefits provides a ready means of identifying and understanding the concepts and techniques used in estate, business, and employee benefit planning. Recognizing that we live in a world of visual communication, numerous drawings and charts have been included to assist readers in identifying and understanding many of the concepts which are most frequently encountered when working with clients and other professionals. It can serve as a desktop reference source, a classroom training aid, or, carried in a briefcase, as a resource to be shared with clients or other advisors.

New in the 2024 Edition:

• Analysis of the provisions and ramifications of SECURE Act 2.0, including:
  • changes to the RMD dates
  • reduction in penalties for failure to take RMDs
  • RMD calculation option for partial annuitization
  • new exceptions to the 10% early distribution penalty
  • changes to qualified charitable distributions
  • alterations to the qualified longevity annuity contract premiums
• How SECURE Act 2.0 helps clients can take advantage of three wealth transfer strategies: life insurance, charitable remainder trusts and IRA trusts
• A new section on virtual currency planning discussion the tax treatment of virtual currency
• Expanded coverage of restricted property trusts, including the McGowan case where it seems likely that court will provide substantive guidance on issues that have troubled life insurance carriers
• Analysis of the Eighth Circuit's decision in Connelly v. United States, where the court cast further doubt on the viability of life insurance funded entity buy-sell arrangements
• Update on how AFR rates had dramatically increased and were nearing historical averages in 2023
• Discussion of the IRS' attack on captives funded for what the IRS considers reasons other than legitimate risk-protection

Topics Covered:

• Estate, gift, and income tax planning strategies
• Business valuations and transfers
• Employee compensation and benefit planning
• Asset protection strategies
• Insurance products and risk management techniques
• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid eligibility and benefits
• Fringe benefits
• Trust structures and trust planning
• Corporations and pass-through entities