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In this ten minute interview, Brian Lucareli and Tim Voigtman of Foley & Lardner discuss developments regarding the entity-level taxation. Insights are provided on the impact of the SALT limitation, as a number of U.S. states have adopted legislation that allow flow-through entities to elect to pay state income taxes as an entity level tax.

With an array of charitable giving options, it's important to understand how each gift could affect your annual deductions. Here's a quick guide to tax deductions, out-of-pocket deductions, and required substantiation. For the individuals and families looking to go beyond the standard donation, there are a few alternate options with their own tax considerations.

A best-in-class family office tax function goes beyond preparing timely tax returns to drive tax strategy and reduce the overall income, gift, and estate tax burden across generations. Given the role taxes have on most families, it’s imperative for the family office to ensure it has the proper infrastructure and resources to understand, plan, and strategize from both the tax planning and compliance standpoint. Best practices are provided to help strengthen your family office’s tax capabilities.

2022 has been an eventful year with spiking inflation, rising interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty, and unnerving market volatility. Yet amidst these uncontrollable events and uncertainty going into 2023, there are still some valuable tax planning considerations and opportunities within your control.

Non-U.S. families establishing succession planning structures rarely think about the U.S. generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax. Nevertheless, when a foreign trust becomes a U.S. domestic trust so that distributions can be made in a tax-efficient manner to the settlor’s U.S. grandchildren and more remote descendants, U.S. trustees or tax return preparers may raise questions about whether those distributions are subject to the GST tax. Advisers to these families should become familiar with the application of the GST tax rules in order to bring clarity to the situation.

A non-U.S. company's classification for U.S. tax purposes is important for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) compliance and U.S. withholding tax reasons. Advisors to families with succession planning structures that include holding, operating, and other companies should determine the U.S. tax classification for each company in the structure and resulting compliance and tax implications.

Through the evolution of the family journey, it’s clear that family structures have become more complex and estate planning needs to shift to a new model that focuses on multiple aspects of wealth.

The ownership and governance structure of a private family trust company (“PFTC”) is highly customizable. This is important because all families are different, with different goals, family dynamics, asset composition, family sizes, and family affiliates. With that in mind, there are some key considerations in structuring the entity ownership and governance of a PFTC, both tax-related and not tax-related.

Continuing a trend of the past five years, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) grew in assets under management in 2020. However, the fact remains that the ETF continues to be a one-size-fits-all solution that isn’t optimal for everyone. The flexibility of a custom passive separately managed account (SMA) can beat an ETF in terms of tax efficiency in many cases. Three advantages of the SMA illustrate the benefits.

Even when there is a financial gift to sufficiently endow an art collection today, there is no certainty that the endowment will be able to fund the charity indefinitely into the future. When there is no charity willing to preserve the collection, the artist or collector should consider using a private foundation. Especially now as the future of museums is moving away from the brick-and-mortar and toward a virtual institution.