Overland Park Attorney

Weekly Blog Digest - Overland Park, KS - Estate Planning

In review, here are the five Blog Posts from this past week for your convenience.  I welcome your feed back regarding any of these posts and your input regarding any of these areas of practice which you would like for me to address.

Stay Informed About State Retirement Taxation, especially in Overland Park, KS!

If you're thinking of relocating, compare the taxes in potential retirement states to those in your current state. Wherever you retire, you may be eligible for senior-related breaks on retirement income, property taxes and sales taxes.

The Science Of Fertility Impacts Inheritance Planning in Overland Park, KS

The law is clear on one thing: when a trust document does not address the issue, Ms. Klein said, “children born with the new technology are entitled to inherit with the same rights as a natural-born child.”

Selling The Business - Learn From Others' Mistakes – even in Overland Park, KS

Every year, I used to get together with a client who was a business owner, and every year I would ask him, “Bruce, have you told your guys that you want them to buy the business?” He had a plan that he would eventually sell his contracting business to his senior executives, but he had yet to inform them of this fact.

Inheritance Planning For Heirs in Overland Park, KS

Take steps to ensure that the money you inherit will last and help you meet your major financial objectives.

Retiring Abroad? Stay Informed On FATCA – even if You Are From Overland Park, KS

A U.S. tax crackdown is coming for foreign retirement plans.

Retiring Abroad? Stay Informed On FATCA - even if you are from Overland Park, KS

A U.S. tax crackdown is coming for foreign retirement plans.

While many retirees choose to spend their golden years close to home, others are opting to spend their retirement abroad in a foreign country. Unfortunately, a “foreign” retirement may attract troubling scrutiny from the IRS and the implementation of FATCA.

According to a recent Bloomberg article titled “Foreign Retirement Plans Seen Scrutinized in U.S. Effort: Taxes,” FATCA, or the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is a 2010 law set to crack down on foreign accounts held either intentionally or otherwise to elude U.S. taxation.

While it has been a surprisingly effective initiative, FATCA also has caused some unintentional headaches for some unintentional targets. Banking in various parts of the world has already felt some sting. Foreign banks (notably Swiss banks) have been bogged down with FATCA regulations and some have taken it out on Americans abroad.

If you have been thinking of retiring to foreign shores for some time, then you might be familiar with FATCA. However, as the Bloomberg article notes, the scrutiny attending FATCA is about to reach out into retirement accounts.

Retirement accounts are, generally, designed to be exempt. Nevertheless, the problem is intervening international laws, government-to-government agreements, and ensuring that your foreign retirement does not fall within the sights of FATCA. Instead, you need to ensure that your retirement finds its rightful exemption.

This is a developing issue. If you are or may be affected, then it is essential that you stay informed.

Reference: Bloomberg (August 28, 2013) “Foreign Retirement Plans Seen Scrutinized in U.S. Effort: Taxes”

For more information about this issue - especially if you are from Overland Park, KS, please visit my website.

Love Knows No Boundaries … Except When it Comes to Estate & Tax Laws - even in Overland Park, KS

The number of cross-border marriages, where
spouses hail from different countries, is rapidly rising—and so are their
international tax and estate-planning issues.

Love knows no boundaries. We are
all familiar with this phrase, but how true can it be? Not so accurate when it
comes to marriage among couples with different nationalities.

International marriage can
trigger a taxation and estate planning headache.

In fact a recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported the
following: “All told, nearly five million Americans in 2010 were married to
someone who was born in another country, twice as many as in 1960, according to
the Minnesota Population Center. Other countries have had similar jumps.”

The article, titled “A Global Love Affair,” observed that these global affairs
bridge the invisible lines on the globes between nations and unite loving
couples from Russia, the U.S., France, Germany, and places more exotic – then
tie the laws of those same countries into knots.

If you and a loved one are
separated by an incidental national barrier, then be wary of how the respective
laws of your respective nation may conflict and potentially confound. There are
almost as many sad legal stories as there are happy love stories.

Reference: The Wall Street
Journal (May 21, 2013) “A Global Love Affair”