Charitable Shelter

摘要

Are you sitting on a highly appreciated asset-say, a big block of a single stock, a piece of real estate or even a painting-that you'd like to turn into a diversified portfolio of stocks, funds or ETFs producing a steady stream of retirement income? Don't be surprised if your CPA or financial planner starts babbling acronyms: CRUT, CRAT, NICRUT, NIMCRUT, Flip CRUT. Hear him out. The higher federal tax rates that kicked in this year have given all these variants of the four-decade-old charitable remainder trust new appeal for upper-income folks. While such trusts have never gone out of fashion for the truly charitably inclined, these days "people are motivated to do it just for the tax law changes," reports Thomas Lee, a Rockville, Md. financial planner who has been promoting charitable trusts through GiveStrategy.com since 2009 and now sees them taking off. One of his clients is considering a trust for a $350,000 collection of Japanese figurines, and he's seen them funded with everything from gold to a Leonardo da Vinci painting.