In an effort to keep you informed I am going to post each time I attend an educational meeting.  I will either post something I learned that is new tax law or information that may be helpful to you.  I do need to tell you that I spend a lot of time at meetings to keep up on what is new and to refresh myself on different topics related to taxes and financial planning.

An example:

On June 24 I attended an 8 hour meeting which explained the tax treatment of estates and trusts and examples of how these types of tax returns are completed.  Bear in mind that there are 2 types of estate tax returns:  one reports  the assets of the deceased and the other reports the income of the estate.  The following discussion deals with an estate income tax return.  An interesting item presented at this meeting dealt with the treatment of distributions from the estate of a deceased person when there are taxable items in the estate.  Distributions from the estate that are not bequests could be taxable to you if they are the first items distributed.  An example of this:  Your close relative dies with taxable items in their estate and has a will that bequests all of their possessions except a car.   If it were decided that you were to receive the car and it were distributed before the taxable part of the estate, you would owe tax on the value of the car up to the taxable amount of the estate.  From this information you can immediately see planning can avoid unintended consequences.