File Your Gift Tax Return

I am in Chicago for a Firm Tax Partner meeting today and tomorrow and then head to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the annual South Dakota Soybean Association meeting.  One of my partners is speaking at this meeting on estate taxes and we have a booth at the show.  If there are any readers that will be at the meeting, please stop by and say hi.

In one of our breakout sessions dealing with Estate and Gift taxes, I was reminded again that if you are gifting any interests in land, partnerships, corporations or any hard to value property, you must file a gift tax return and you must provide adequate disclosure on these gifts.  If you do not file a gift tax return AND provide adequate exposure, the IRS has unlimited time to challenge the value of these gifts.

Most likely this challenge would happen upon the death of the person making the gift and this may occur many decades after the gift was made and you would need to provide proof of how your arrived at your value.  By filing a return and providing adequate disclosure in the year of the gift, the IRS then only has three years to challenge your valuation.

Therefore, if you are making any of those gifts this year, file your gift tax return.

Paul Neiffer, CPA