A grantor-retained annuity trust (commonly referred to by the

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

GRAT) is a

financial instrument Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership, interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form ...

commonly used in the United States to make large financial gifts to family members without paying a U.S.

gift tax In economics, a gift tax is the tax on money or property that one living person or corporate entity gives to another. A gift tax is a type of transfer tax that is imposed when someone gives something of value to someone else. The transfer must ...

Basic mechanism

A grantor transfers property into an irrevocable trust in exchange for the right to receive fixed payments at least annually, based on original fair market value of the property transferred. At the end of a specified time, any remaining value in the trust is passed on to a

beneficiary A beneficiary in the broadest sense is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor. For example, the beneficiary of a life insurance policy is the person who receives the payment of the amount of ...

of the trust as a gift. Beneficiaries are generally close family members of the grantor, such as children or grandchildren, who are prohibited from being named beneficiaries of another estate freeze technique, the grantor-retained income trust. If a grantor dies before the trust period ends, the assets in the GRAT are included in the grantor's estate by operation of I.R.C. § 2036, eliminating any potential gift tax benefit; this is the GRAT's main weakness as a

tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxe ...

mechanism. The United States

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...

has a number of regulations governing how the remaining value of the trust at the end of the term (or at the death of the grantor) is taxed. When the GRAT is first set up, a "gift value" of the GRAT is calculated. The gift value is set equal to the initial contribution to the GRAT plus a theoretical interest earned on the principal, minus the annuity payments that would be made through the end of the term. The theoretical rate of interest is determined by IRS regulations. The rate is set equal to 120% of the federal mid-term rate during the month that the GRAT is established. To realize a tax benefit, the sum of the scheduled annuity payments of a GRAT is set to be about equal to the principal plus theoretical interest. Thus, for tax purposes, the initially calculated gift value is zero, since what will be paid back to the donor in annuity payments is anticipated to be about equal to what the donor invested, plus interest. If a GRAT is funded with highly volatile assets, it is possible that the actual interest earned on the assets will be substantially higher than the IRS theoretical interest. Thus at the end of the term, the value remaining in the GRAT may still be large, even though the initial IRS calculation suggests that it should have been zero. This remaining value is then passed on to the beneficiary without incurring a gift tax.

Important legal cases

* Audrey J. Walton v. Commissioner, 115 T.C. 589 (2000), acq. Notice , 2003-44 IRB, 15 October 2003. This case established the current way that the IRS established a gift value for a GRAT.

Patents

The Wealth Transfer Group owns a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

covering different methods for managing SOGRATs. A SOGRAT is a GRAT that is at least partially funded with stock options. The patent number is , and is entitled "Establishing and managing grantor retained annuity trusts funded by nonqualified stock options". On 12 January 2011, the director of the

USPTO The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Ale ...

initiated a

reexamination In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, ...

of US patent 6,567,790. The reexamination serial number is 90/009,868.

Controversies

A ProPublica report detailed how several ultra-wealthy families exploited the GRAT to avoided potentially billions in estate taxes. Grantor-retained annuity trusts were used by controversial sex offender

Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( , ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional career as a teacher at the Dalton School, despite lacking a col ...

to help his wealthy clients avoid taxes.

References

{{Reflist Wills and trusts Inheritance Personal taxes Taxation in the United States Insurance in the United States Annuities

Basic mechanism

Important legal cases

Patents

Controversies

See also

References