Tax Planning for Annuities
Changeable annuity owners often pick up a “excellent news, negative news” saga from their economic and tax consultants. The good news might be that their investment has gone up in value; the negative information is the fact that when they die, their beneficiaries may have to pay income tax on that development. There’s, however, a method to eliminate the “not so good news” part of this story and pass much more dollars to your loved ones with tax planning.
Let us take the case of Sally, age 70, a widow with 1 daughter. After her husband passed away, 10 yrs ago, Sally sold her house and put in part of the money in a variable annuity.
It was wise tax planning as she didn’t require money for living expenses and simply needed to develop with out generating extra yearly income tax.
Sally’s annuity has almost doubled in value over the time she has owned it. But she has lately been advised that her daughter, who is in the 35% tax bracket, may eventually need to pay income tax on those gains. Notice that one aspect of tax breaks for annuities is always to have an individual in the lowest tax bracket pay the taxes.
Since Sally doesn’t need income from her annuity at the moment, 1 tax planning technique could be to have her daughter purchase a life insurance coverage on Sally’s life for the annuity’s value. This would allow the proceeds of the life policy to move income tax totally free once Sally passes away.
To purchase the coverage, Sally could annuitize her variable annuity. She’ll get a life time income and be able to offer her daughter sufficient money to make the life insurance premium payments. Any of the withdrawals that Sally doesn’t spend, might be invested to provide for her long term demands.
There are yet 2 additional tax planning advantages. At age seventy, annuity distributions will have a relatively high exclusion ratio meaning that almost all of each payment is actually a tax-free return of principal. Better yet is the fact that Sally is living on a fairly moderate income and it is in the 15% tax bracket. Therefore, by her harvesting the annuity, tax on the income will be paid at 15% rather than allowing the annuity to be inherited by her daughter who would require to pay tax at 35%.
Tax planning, the thinking in advance of how to best handle the annuity to cut back taxes, may save significant tax bucks for the family.