"Accidental" tax break saves wealthiest Americans $100 billion
 

Sheldon Adelson makes no secret of his disdain for the estate tax.

“How many times do you have to pay taxes on money?” the casino magnate asks, leaning on a blue cane on the cobblestones of Wall Street on a crisp October morning.

A gravel-voiced man whose accent recalls his blue-collar Boston roots, Adelson, 80, has just rung the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of his Las Vegas Sands Corp. are at a five-year high, making him one of the world’s richest men, worth more than $30 billion.

Federal law requires billionaires such as Adelson who want to leave fortunes to their children to pay estate or gift taxes of 40 percent on those assets. Adelson has blunted that bite by exploiting a loophole that Congress unintentionally created and that the Internal Revenue Service unsuccessfully challenged.

By shuffling his company stock in and out of more than 30 trusts, he’s given at least $7.9 billion to his heirs while legally avoiding about $2.8 billion in U.S. gift taxes since 2010, according to calculations based on data in Adelson’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

rest of the article: Accidental tax break saves wealthiest Americans $100 billion | Business & Technology | The Seattle Times

It's a rigged game. Estamos jodidos.

I don't suppose congress is rushing to legislate this out...

Congress holds some of the wealthiest "Americans". Why would they rush to fix this.

Where its at!
 

South Dakota:):cool:

•South Dakota has no limit on the life of its trusts;
•There is no South Dakota state income tax for the trusts or the individuals who are the trusts’ beneficiaries;
•South Dakota offers substantial protection from creditors of beneficiaries;
•South Dakota, as a part of the United States, governs only U.S. trusts, not foreign trusts, which can experience numerous difficulties with the U.S. testing authorities and other U.S. and foreign entities.


North Point Trust, South Dakota Trust, Dynasty Trust, Legacy Trust, Trustee, South Dakota Trust Company

South Dakota was a pioneer in “dynasty trusts,” which allow families to escape estate taxes forever. The state offers iron-clad secrecy for trusts and protection of assets from creditors and former spouses. It also has rules that make it easier for families to set up their own trust company, rather than rely on a bank trustee, and to enhance their control over trust investment decisions. An added attraction: South Dakota levies no state income taxes on investments.

In the past four years, the amount of money administered by South Dakota trust companies has tripled to $121 billion, almost all of it from out of state, according to the state’s Division of Banking. South Dakota is particularly adept at “creating laws that are conducive to a massive exploitation of a federal tax loophole,” says Edward McCaffery, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. “We have a tax haven in our midst.”

The amount that can be put into a dynasty trust is usually limited by federal rules. The limit was about $1 million during the 1990s. Throughout the 2000s, the ceiling rose, reaching $5 million by 2011. The limit was scheduled to revert to $1.4 million at the end of 2012. McDowell says his clients rushed to meet the deadline during the last few months of 2012, creating billions of dollars’ worth of new trusts. He had to turn away customers and hire retirees to handle the crush of paperwork. By the end of the year, he says he’d added about 500 trusts to his rolls, more than twice the number in a typical year: “I call it the trust tsunami of 2012.”

The families needn’t have rushed: On Jan. 1, 2013, Congress made the $5 million limit permanent. While President Obama’s annual budget proposals have called for closing the dynasty trust loophole—many states now permit them—Congress has not done so.

For the richest families, even a $5 million dynasty trust represents only a fraction of their fortune, so lawyers have invented complicated strategies—one is an installment sale of assets to an intentionally defective grantor trust—to squeeze bigger sums into the vehicles, as much as $39 million, according to a presentation published by South Dakota Trust last year. McDowell’s firm now administers trusts valued at $14 billion, according to its website, almost all of them originating in other states.


South Dakota Dynasty Trusts: Tax Haven for Rich Families - Businessweek

Excellent. I'm envious of those with the means to have people who find mistakes.

Now they can fix the piss-poorly written regulation that allowed it to happen. Assuming if course it was an "oversight."

:D:D

Let's be realistic here Swamp. Doesn't money always get in the door first, while the rest of us wait in line? I don't care if your going to a restaurant or a club or the graveyard. ;)

It seems unlikely to be an oversight to me.

The last thing our government needs is more money. Good for the billionaires.

This.

Government is the problem, not the poor workers that got their money by working to earn it.

The more billionaires we have in America, the more millionaires we'll have too, and so on.

Trickle down.
Yeah....

Not "trickle down" or any other liberal label.

Its called earning and hard work.

Those who won't will always complain about those who do.

Good, screw the government they don't need anymore money.

Its highway robbery to steal 40% of your life's work.

Where would you be without government?