Resources

Have you gifted real estate worth more than $13,000 to a family member? If so, don’t forget to file a gift tax return.

A recent Wall Street Journal article discusses the IRS’s “low profile, but sweeping” effort to discover unreported gifts of real estate to family members through an examination of state land-transfer records. What does that mean? It means that the IRS is looking at real estate deeds that show transfers of property between family members. When they find one, they look to IRS records to see if the person who gifted the property filed a gift tax return. If the IRS doesn’t find one in their records, they’ll probably send you a letter, which isn’t on most people’s list of favorite things to find in the mailbox.

Congress Brings Down the Hammer on Vacation Home Sales

A recent article in the New York Times reported that the requests for property tax appeals “…are coming in record numbers, from owners of $10 million estates and one-bedroom bungalows, from residents of the high-tax enclaves surrounding New York City, and from taxpayers in the Rust Belt and states like […]