Gifts of Retirement Plan Assets

Like many Americans, you are probably aware that the accumulation of assets in your retirement plan is the basis for a financially secure future. To preserve your retirement assets after your lifetime, consider the benefits of using them in a totally different way.

Retirement accounts are often exposed to income taxes and estate taxes, at a combined marginal rate that could rise to 65 percent or even higher on large, taxable estates. Yet many of these taxes can be avoided or reduced through a carefully planned charitable gift.

Other considerations come into play when deciding on using retirement plan assets for charitable giving. Your account can pass directly to a charitable organization as your primary beneficiary, or it can be transferred to a deferred giving arrangement that will pay an income for life to a family member, after which the remaining assets pass to the organization. You might even consider a deferred gift that is designed to pay a life income to yourself.

How Retirement Accounts Are Taxed
Qualified retirement plans are those that receive favorable income tax treatment during an employee's lifetime. No income tax is due on the funds as contributed, and no income tax is due on the earnings and appreciation while in the plan. You pay taxes on the funds only when you receive them. Such plans come in many forms: a defined benefit or contribution pension plan, money purchase pension, profit-sharing plan, annuity plan, 401(k) or 403(b) plan, stock bonus plan, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) or simplified employee pension (usually a SEP-IRA) from your workplace, and Keogh accounts and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) you set up for yourself.

Generally, the undistributed balance of qualified retirement plans is fully includable in your gross estate for estate tax purposes. Since the funds in retirement accounts usually represent deferred compensation that has not been subject to income tax, giving the accounts to individual heirs exposes the funds to income taxes. Your retirement dollars can be seriously depleted by this double taxation.

A qualified retirement plan often makes a large, taxable distribution shortly after an employee's death. As a general rule, qualified plans other than IRAs will specify how quickly distributions must be made from the plan. In the case of an IRA, if the owner dies before reaching the required beginning date, the plan benefits must generally be distributed within five years, but a designated beneficiary may stretch the distributions over his or her life or life expectancy. If the owner dies after the required beginning date, then the entire balance can be distributed over the longer of what would have been the deceased owner's remaining life expectancy or the designated beneficiary's remaining life expectancy. Only a surviving spouse can roll over an inherited distribution to his or her own IRA and benefit from further income tax deferral; all other beneficiaries are taxed according to the above rules.

Income in Respect of a Decedent
The IRS labels estate assets that were not previously included in a decedent's taxable income as items that generate "income in respect of a decedent" (IRD). In plain language, these are assets that would have been taxed as income had the recipient lived long enough to receive them. In addition to qualified retirement plans, IRD items include accrued interest on Certificates of Deposit and savings bonds, unused vacation pay, non-qualified stock options, deferred payments of capital gains and other undistributed but earned income. Among all your assets, the largest IRD source will probably be your retirement accounts.

By donating retirement assets, those funds avoid both estate and IRD taxes, and you can be certain that 100 percent of the balance of your retirement funds will support your philanthropic objectives. Generally, the cost to individual heirs will be modest.

Example: Bill is considering adding a charitable bequest to his will, with the residue of his estate passing to his children. Instead, he should name your favorite charitable organizations as beneficiary of his profit-sharing account. The death benefit passing to the organization will not only qualify for the estate tax charitable deduction but will also pass free of any income tax obligation. His children will benefit from this change because, rather than getting the profit-sharing account proceeds that are subject to income tax, they will receive other assets of his estate that are free of income taxes.

For example, Bill owns stocks that have a low cost basis. He can secure a further tax advantage by leaving these to his children. They will receive a step-up in the income tax basis to the date-of-death value of the stocks. Since the basis is the amount from which any gain or loss will be figured when the new owner ultimately sells the property, this means there will never be a tax on the appreciation that occurred during his lifetime. The person who inherits the property will owe tax only on appreciation after the time of Bill's death.

How to Donate Your Retirement Account
The simplest way to leave the balance of a retirement account to us after your lifetime is to list us as the beneficiary on the beneficiary form provided by your plan administrator. Never make a beneficiary change, however, before discussing your desires with your professional advisor. For an IRA or Keogh plan you administer personally, notify the custodian in writing and keep a copy with your valuable papers.

If you are married, your surviving spouse is entitled by law to receive the entire amount in these qualified plans: money purchase pension, profit-sharing plan, 401(k) plan, stock bonus plan, ESOP or any defined benefit or annuity plan (though not an IRA). In order for the assets to be transferable to charitable nonprofits, your spouse must execute a written waiver (even though you may designate a charitable organization as beneficiary on your employer's forms). Your spouse can execute one after your death, if necessary. In that case, the document must also include a qualified disclaimer.

If you prefer to make your spouse the primary beneficiary of the retirement account, you can name charitable nonprofits as the secondary beneficiary.

Perhaps you want your children to benefit from your retirement account, too. In that case, you might designate a specific amount to be paid to us, before the division of the rest among your children.

Tax Precautions and Options for Charitable Transfers
Being cautious in the way you designate your charitable bequest will assure that you are not setting your estate up for some disadvantageous tax consequences.

Suppose your will provides that your retirement plan assets are to be used to fulfill a specific bequest to your favorite charitable organizations. A problem could arise if your estate were required to recognize the plan distribution as taxable income while not being able to claim an offsetting charitable income tax deduction. To sidestep this problem, your will should provide that payments to charitable nonprofits are to be made from IRD items. A different way to avoid this problem is to omit any reference to the charitable contribution in your will and instead simply designate the charitable organization as the successor beneficiary on the retirement plan forms provided by your employer.

Once you reach age 70 1/2, you are required to begin taking payments from your qualified retirement plans if you have not yet done so. The IRS rules make it easy to name a charitable organization as the primary or contingent beneficiary. Under the regulations, designation of a charitable organization as the beneficiary of any portion of the plan benefits will not increase the employee's minimum required distribution, despite the fact that the organization would not qualify as a designated beneficiary. It is preferable to make certain that the amounts are paid to the charitable organization before Sept. 30 of the year following the employee's death.

Life Income for Survivor
Another tax-benefiting possibility is to transfer retirement assets at death to a tax-exempt deferred giving plan, such as a charitable remainder unitrust or a charitable remainder annuity trust. The trust beneficiary you designate will receive an income for life, either a fixed percentage of the value of the trust assets as revalued annually or a fixed dollar amount. Thereafter, the remaining principal will support our work.

By naming a deferred giving plan as the ultimate beneficiary of your retirement account, income taxes can be deferred over the life of the income beneficiary you designate. This may offer the only income tax deferral opportunity for your heirs if your retirement plan requires an immediate distribution.

Example: Under the rules governing her company's profit-sharing plan, Anne's account must be distributed within five years after her death. She estimates that when she dies, the account balance could be at least $200,000. If she were to name her daughter, Sandy, as the beneficiary, the entire amount would go to Sandy as ordinary, taxable income, incurring probable federal and state income taxes of more than $40,000. In addition, a federal estate tax of more than $90,000 would be due if Anne's other assets equaled more than the amount exempt from estate tax. Less than $70,000, or 35 percent, of the $200,000 could be left for her daughter after payment of all the taxes!

Instead, Anne creates a charitable remainder unitrust and names it as the beneficiary of her profit-sharing plan. She arranges for the unitrust to pay 7 percent of the value of the assets to Sandy each year for life. The net result is significant income tax deferral. The entire $200,000 can be invested to produce investment income. The estate tax on the value of Sandy's interest must be paid from other assets. The partial estate tax charitable deduction for the present value of the charitable remainder interest will reduce Anne's estate tax.

If you would like to receive more information
about retirement plan assets, please contact Mary Ludwig, Development Director at 712-732-5127, for more information.

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