Sharpe Blog

In the final days of 2020, President Donald Trump signed the biggest COVID-19 relief package since the CARES Act passed last spring. Incoming President Joe Biden and Congress have signaled that additional help and stimulus are needed to battle the pandemic and accompanying economic woes that unfolded in the first quarter of 2020. President Biden …Read More

Sec. 7520(c)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code requires the updating of the actuarial tables every 10 years. In August 2020, the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated tables for the 2009-2011 period. This report shows the continual improvement in longevity. Almost 6,300 more people out of …Read More

Last time, I suggested this language for a year-end cash gift receipt: Thank you for your cash gift of $5,000 made by your Chase Bank check number 2651, dated December 31, 2020, which [our charity] received in the mail on January 4, 2021. [Our charity] provided no goods or services to you in consideration of …Read More

In establishing a testamentary charitable gift annuity that qualifies for the federal estate tax charitable deduction, all the variables must be discernible at the date of the donor’s passing. These variables could be described either in (1) the beneficiary designation document itself such as the will or trust or (2) a stand-alone agreement on file …Read More

In a lot of years, January has been hectic for me. Why? Because my phone has rung ceaselessly about year-end gift problems. What sorts of problems? These have been typical phone calls: Donor wired stock to us in late December, but we didn’t receive the stock until January. Our business office says we keep our …Read More

Last night, President Trump signed the latest relief package attached to the Consolidated Appropriations Act to fund the federal government. The relief portion of the legislative package was estimated at approximately $900 billion and includes extended unemployment benefits for millions of people who lost jobs this year, as well as $600 one-time relief payments to …Read More

Many commentators believe funding a testamentary charitable gift annuity with an income in respect of a decedent (IRD) item, like an IRA, means the annuity will be taxed in full immediately, with no recovery in basis. But is that, in fact, the correct result given the purpose of the IRD rules? When this IRD item …Read More

There was a lot of charitable giving in the U.S. before the federal income tax (1913) and a federal income tax charitable deduction (1917) came along. Example: As a young person, I made great use of a public library in Aurora, Illinois—one of the many such libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie funded these libraries …Read More

Getting donors to say “yes” often involves working with their professional advisors—attorneys, accountants, financial planners, trust officers, insurance agents, bankers, etc. Planned giving officers may be more knowledgeable about sophisticated charitable planning than professionals who only occasionally encounter charitable remainder trusts, charitable gift annuities or the use of charitable techniques in estate and generation-skipping transfers. …Read More

If an individual wants to give LLC units to your organization, be careful! Potential problems lie ahead for both the donor and your organization. Here’s why, by way of an example. Suppose the gift is of 10% of all the outstanding LLC units. It’s necessary to analyze the gift on two levels. First level: Donor …Read More