Legal Advice

[For legal reasons, this is not legal advice. If you want legal advice from this, please go away]

[For illegal reasons though, also go away]

Gifts are exempt from taxes. Unless your generous donor dies. Then inheritance tax comes up from behind to suplex you into oblivion. So how do you work that reversal and keep on top of the tax man? Well… you have seven years, so let’s work from there.

If someone gives you a bunch of money expecting to die, they need to survive at least another seven years. After that, the gift, or “transfer” becomes exempt from tax and they are free to die as they wish. Before that seven years is up however, the transfer is only “potentially exempt”. That means the tax man is sitting out there in the bushes, waiting for that death certificate to hit the registers.

I’m not saying you should hold onto a body and wait seven years from the transfer of the gift before you file for a death certificate. That would be tax evasion. That’s illegal. And probably kinda gross too to be honest. I can’t advise that. Not legally, not ethically, not hygienically.

That being said, you can keep someone legally alive on life support for long enough that the seven years run out. That’s tax avoidance. Completely legal. But life support can get expensive… I’m talking thousands a day. So don’t spend hundreds of thousands a year just to avoid tax (unless it’s worth it of course). Besides, I would only do this if I was sure it’s what they would have wanted. So, future kids, I hope you’re listening.