Mining the generation gap — Estate planning strategies for you and your parents

Description

Abstract: Shifting income to family members in lower tax brackets can be a powerful tax-reduction strategy that applies not only to children, but to parents as well. As this article explains, under some circumstances it can be beneficial to transfer appreciated, income-producing assets to parents with the understanding that they’ll be returned upon the parents’ deaths. Another is to have them convert or roll over traditional IRA or qualified retirement plan balances into a Roth IRA. A sidebar discusses the expansion of the “kiddie tax.”