LLC means “limited liability company.” So what?
LLCs play an important role in charitable gift planning.
- A charity may want to establish an LLC to receive gifts of real estate, for example.
- A donor may want to follow Mark Zuckerberg’s lead and create an LLC as a vehicle for making charitable gifts.
- An individual may want to donate units (as they’re sometimes called) in an LLC.
Why a charity may wish to create an LLC. For a charity, accepting a gift of real estate may be beneficial, but it also may be risky. To deflect risk, a charity can establish a single-member LLC of which the charity is the single member. Real estate donated to the LLC is deemed given to the charity for federal tax purposes, meaning the donor can get a charitable deduction. The LLC, however, shields the charity from liability associated with the real estate while allowing the charity complete control over the LLC.
A “charitable LLC.” Mark Zuckerberg transferred billions of $$ to an LLC he created. This did not generate a charitable deduction. Gifts by the LLC to charities will generate charitable deductions for Mr. Zuckerberg, however. So there’s no magic here. After all, Mr. Zuckerberg could make those gifts himself.
Mr. Zuckerberg did get to say he had transferred billions of $$ for charitable purposes (or some such thing). Mr. Zuckerberg also retained control over the transferred billions of $$ for investment and other purposes, which was better for him than giving to a DAF.
A charitable gift of LLC units may cause tax problems. Why? Because such gifts are ordinarily treated for tax purposes as gifts of partnership interests, and that type of gift can be extraordinarily complex, messy and unfavorable for both the donor and the donee.
The details here are potentially immense … too great to discuss in what remains of this blog. We’ll look at the salient details next time.
Sharpe Group will continue to post helpful information for you here on our blog and on our social media sites. If this blog was shared with you and you wish to sign up, you can do so at www.SHARPEnet.com/blog.
We can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn @sharpegroup.
We welcome questions you’d like us to address. Email us at info@SHARPEnet.com and we’ll share your question and our thoughts in this blog and on social media.