Articles Tagged with “inheritance tax”

A qualified personal residence trust (QPRT) offers an opportunity for homeowners to minimize or avoid federal and New Jersey estate taxes. A QPRT allows a homeowner to transfer ownership of a primary or vacation home to a “grantor trust,” while keeping the right to live there for a specified period of time. When that specified time ends, ownership passes outright to the homeowner’s children or whoever is named as the remainder beneficiaries.

When you transfer your home into a QPRT, you make a gift to the beneficiaries which is subject to gift tax. The value of that taxable gift is not the full fair market value of the home, as it would be with an outright transfer. The value is discounted. In the current real estate market values are quite low, adding to the benefit of the QPRT. The gift is also discounted to reflect that you have retained an interest (the right to live in the home for the specified term). Internal Revenue Service tables and current interest rates are used to determine the amount of the discount. The federal gift tax exemption is currently $5,120,000.00 and you can utilize a portion of that exemption and pay no gift tax. As New Jersey does not have a gift tax, you can transfer the home without incurring any New Jersey gift tax.
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