Estate-tax Books

this book really stunk don't get it

The first review about this book states, "It just keeps getting better." That review was written in 1997, eleven years ago. In fact, as far as being relevant to the current state of the law, it would be a big mistake to rely on this book. The entire Federal Estate Tax Exemption Law was revamped by Congress in 2001, and will be again in 2010. If you want to read a great book stuffed with contemporary laws and easy, even fun, to read, get, "Everything A Baby Boomer Should Know -- An Insider's Guide to Estate Planning.

This book fully explaines it all. I got a trust through a lawyer and it was just as this book says. There are diagrams to show and the language is very easy to understand.

The book may be good. I don't know but these people have obviously written their own testimonials. How do the readers happen to know how many have been sold etc.

My in-laws had been putting off estate planning, which would put the family business at jeopardy at their death. The first chapter gives examples of what happens without planning, and after reading it, they started the process of a living trust and most importantly finished it!
The book also showed my husband and I why we needed a living trust to protect our young son (so he would not inherit wealth, without strings, at a naive 18), and why my widowed sister needed a trust to protect her children receiving an inheritance if she died after remarriage -- without a trust her inheritance would go to husband #2, and not her children.
The book helps.

a decent book with some good advice on making MORE money if you already have a few grand to start with. The bulk of the book however pushes realestate investment, and "hitting them when they're down" to gain properties cheaply. The section on stock market investing is also decent, but you need to have a a fair amount of money to start with to keep the transaction fees from eating you alive.

Wealth 101 is a compendium of Wade's best strategies, all inone book. You will learn about covered calls, rolling stocks, options, stock splits, lease options on real estate, corporations and more. This really should be a college course and taught as Wealth 101. Great stuff!

This book is a compendium of Cooks Real Estate, Stock Market and Busines strategies. Actually 101 strategies from someone who has been in the trenches, knows what works and what doesn't work.

Too many other books are written by "paper authorities" who only write based on popular dogma perpetuated by other authors who are high on advice but low on experience.

Wealth 101 should be taught in schools. Good book, you'll love it.

Lots of delicious tidbits to get the brain juices flowing. This is the appetizer to all your wealth meals. I bought it, initially, because it was one of the few books that touched on the subject of buying notes. It's simple and easy to read. So if you're not sure which direction you want to go to build your wealth...start here. You can refer to it over and over when you're ready for a new wealth concept.

This book is easy to read and covers a wide spectrum of financial strategies. This is exactly what the book was meant to do, and I think it does a pretty good job at it. There are quite a few references to the author's other works for those interested in particular strategies. Clearly, I would recommend that someone only use this book as a good overview of strategies, but not for making any specific financial decision. This should give you the information to decide how to pursue your financial goals, but you would want to pursue much more specific and detailed material on real estate, stocks, options, etc.. before making any specific financial decisions.

This might be a good book if you're Trustee of a multi-million dollar estate, with multiple stocks, million-dollar properties, and yachts. It was not useful for my situation, which I couldn't determine from the description and reviews. If the estate is that complicated and that much money is involved, I'd get an attorney. It would be worth it.

This book gives you the know how in calling out bully trust officer activities. Buying this book will help you leave your ignorance at the doorstep.

This book was the best informative periodical I could find on the subject of dealing with Trusts. It saved me a lot of grief when issues arose and I needed to address the probate court. This is a terrific guide

This is oriented to trusts in general, while I needed information on special needs trusts (SNT). A separate section detailing differences between SNTs and other trusts would have been useful. For those things that are common between SNT and other types of trusts, this provided good coverage.

re If you are a Bencifiary, Executor of a trust, and a Trustee, or, any combination thereof.

THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOU ALOT OF FRUSTRATION, time, and money with attorneys. Because this book, tells you what they "Attorney's" ( and in this case I mean 'ALL' Attorney's) won't tell you. It also gives good references to follow up resources.

Get a current "Compact Edition of Trust Law" for your state Probate, at the same time you get this book. It will be the best way to know your states probate proceedings specifics.

If you are hesitant to spend money for this book, just do a Search Inside, and go to Chapter 3, Page 2-4, Be Aware of Covetous Attorneys. <--- Read this twice. YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS.

You need to know why attorney's are creating a situation to support coaxing you to believe, you need a Trust Officer, Co-Trustee.

This book will tell you, that attorneys' know the statue allows them to receive payment of 2% of the trust/estate every year when it is over 1 million dollars.

This book will tell you, having an outside trust accountant is not infallible. And YOU, as Trustee, are still held accountable, if your co-trustee, or trust official handling the court accounting, or finances, invesments, or yearly accounting makes errors, or absconds with funds.

Often, attorney's will look for the smallest reason to talk trustees in to hiring a professional co-trustee/trust official, and to bring this suggestion before guardianship court to fill their bank accounts, yet they will tell you this is the only way to satisfy your disgruntled relatives. All the while
they are attached to all the management of the trust gonig forward.

Because of disgruntled relatives, you will really need to contact your state bar association and Read the Compact Edition of Trust Law, like you breathe air .... daily.

FINALLY if you are a visual person, you will want to check out the contents and several pages of your interests of the following booK, as it is equally a TEN STAR BOOK ----> The Trustee's Guide An Essential Handbook for Trustees, Beneficiaries, and Advisors (Paperback) by Howard I. Gross (Author)

You need to remember the Attorney is not the boss of your relatives Trust.

If you are the Trustee, you need to let acquisitive attorney's know you are not willing to expense the estate friviously and understand, you and you alone are accountable, without throughly exploring the disadvantages before giving a written approval.

Great book! We own second home so I think it will be very helpful with Taxes.

Excellent book for strategies in tax-free investing to achieving my personal goal of living in my dream house. I bought this book with "Buying A Second Home: Income, Gateway or Investment" to better understand the tax benefits of second-home ownership.

This book provides some excellent information regarding the topic. A must read for those who are considering investment in a second home.

I like this book, but it left me wanting more. The book does a nice job framing a second home as an investment, but the tax advantages are quickly addressed in chapter two w/o a lot of detail. After one read, I get the general idea, but not all of the implications. Also, the trade-offs of depreciation are only touched on vaguely.

However, the book is very readable and uses great antidotal examples (which I found helped me understand the material better). Also, there are lots of references for additional research. This i probably a good introduction into the subject and did leave me with enough information to decide to pursue this idea of a second home a little farther.

Some people need encouragement. Regarding our dreams for a 2nd home, most of us are probably stuck in ruts, not knowing how to get out. This book does a good job of helping readers envision the possibilities. Too good a job. They do not present a systematic process for realistically considering what a prospective 2nd home buyer can afford, whether this is even a good idea, the downs of investing (how will you feel after 6 months of no rent in your investment property while still paying the mortgage?) They don't have the reader ask enough tough questions before cheering them on to take this bold and potentially devestating step. Think the dot bomb was rough? How about staring a $2000/month mortgage in the face with no hope of liquidating that property that's worth 10% less than you paid for it! I recommend Investing in a Vacation Home for Pleasure and Profit by James H. Boykin instead.

This is a very comprehensive book about reverse mortgages. Important reading for senior looking to use the equity in their home with a reverse mortgage and for the individuals advising seniors on these loans. I highly recommend Tom Kelly's book.

The book is well reseached and written. It answered many questions I had. I was doing the research for my mother because I did not want her to be taken advantage of.

I would highly recomend this book. It gives a good explanation of the features and benefits and if a reverse mortgage is right for you in your particular situation. We hardly had any questions when the reverse mortgage expert came out.

The only thing good about this book is that at one time it was the only book available on reverse mortgages. That is no longer the case. While I haven't sampled the other titles to say how they compare, I can say that you'll find better quality information freely available on the net.

Among the flaws of this book:

It dedicates about 3 chapters (see the table of contents) to discussing what you can do with your money after you've obtained a reverse mortgage. As there are no real restrictions on how that money can be spent, these are useless, arbitrary chapters that would be far better covered in a book on how to spend your retirement.

The few interesting facts the book does introduce (such as the possibility of reducing fees if the mortgage proceeds are applied to long-term care insurance) are not backed up with references, or - as it turns out - explained as being proposed legislation that may never become reality.

You can't find many books on Reverse Mortgage's, let alone that are recent enough to talk about the changes that have gone on with the product. Tom Kelly does an excellent job explaining how they work, pro's and con's, customer stories and interviews with people in the industry. I recommend his book to everyone that is looking to get a Reverse Mortgage or prospecting entering the Reverse Mortgage field.

Putting the emphasis on "THE NEW" REVERSE MORTGAGE Mr. Kelly provides a comprehensive review of this valuable financial tool available to seniors. He lays out the cost and compares the options, dispelling the fears and myths that it is "too expensive". While pointing out that it may not be the best option for some, there are many seniors and mortgage professionals who can benefit from this information. There is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding in the press and in the marketplace about this program. This book will help to set the record straight. With this good information seniors and their adult children can discover that they have more options and can make better choices. The New Reverse Mortgage programs now make it possible for seniors to stay in their homes long term while enjoying tax free income with no fear of foreclosure. If you are a senior or have parents who are seniors you should get this book and read it carefully to explore your options.

Ed Slott repeated alot of what was included in "The Retirement Savings Time Bomb...", so I was not as impressed with this book. You can get 98% of what to do in the "Time Bomb". But if you really want to save all your money to your kids and their kids, it should help you.

Ed does a great job on giving you detailed information of how to stretch your IRA assets for the next generation. He also does a great job of including information on how to write your trust so that you can control your assets beyond the grave. This is mainly important for clients who have lots of assets in their IRAs or for people who just pass away before they use their IRA assets. Since you don't know when you are going to pass away, I think it is important to get your trust and your IRA beneficiaries set up as soon as possible.

One downside of this book is that Ed seems to sell more of his stuff - his newsletter and his training. If you read his books, I think you have most of the information you need unless you run into very complicated situations. If that happens, then I would suggest getting a good financial advisor, CPA, and an estate planning lawyer to assist you.

This is both a very good and very bad book. Slott is a CPA and his bio indicates that he specializes in IRA law and estate planning. The retirement column in the Wall St. Journal uses him as an IRA expert. If you've seen Slott on PBS, you know he is also a pitchman and showman. This book is a mixture of expert IRA info and advice and wild overselling.

On the plus side:
This book is full of IRA information and good IRA advice presented in a very readable manner. I made dozens of notes in the front cover while reading this book. An excellent IRA reference. And I think the book does a service by pointing out that the IRA code has (sort of) a loophole that allows the 'effective' taxes paid on the IRA to be greatly reduced if the IRA is passed on to younger family members who should (Slott recommends) only take out the minimum annually over their lifetimes. Slott calls this the 'stretch' IRA.

On the negative side:
Your IRA can grow into a FAMILY FORTUNE, he screams, with pages of tables showing a 100 thousand IRA growing to millions (in one case to nearly 300 million if left to grow into well into the 21 century!). Nonsense, what about the time value of money? Slott never heard of it (or pretends he never heard of it). The reality, of course, is that if your income tax rate is, say, 33% then when you withdraw IRA funds you lose 1/3rd of it to taxes. The best that even a perfect tax strategy can do is recover this 1/3rd. Nice, but hardly a fortune.

Slott provides a useful check list of features an IRA contract should have. You would think that maybe he would read the IRA contracts of top IRA providers (like Fidelity, Vanguard) and tell us how they stack up? Nope, that's our job, not his.

Convert to a Roth IRA and your money will grow TAX FREE he screams. Slott's very positive on Roth IRA's, too positive. I worked through a Roth conversion example and find that the extra shielding that a Roth IRA allows can boost your after-tax returns a little. (Calculation details are in 'Roth Primer' section of the 'Charity' essay on my home page.) I calculate in a 6% market environment that Roth IRA will yield 6% vs an after tax yield for a traditional IRA of approx 5.4%, or an extra 0.6%/yr investment gain. However, there can be a serious downside to doing a Roth conversion that Slott doesn't mention. A large Roth conversion will likely be taxed at a much higher incremental income tax rate than normal minimum withdrawals, and since Roth has only a tiny yield advantage over a traditional IRA it could easily take a decade or more just to get even.

The author is easy to understand and makes this highly specialized material fun to read. I refer to this book and Mr Slott's other book, "The Retirement Savings Time Bomb" as my IRA Bible's. This is a must read for financial services professionals and consumers with money in IRA accounts.

I found this book to be very helpful in my financial planning for retirement...it gives easy to follow steps,suggestions,ideas and guidelines for maximizing your IRA's,401k's and retirement funds. Ed Slott has provided us with another excellent source of information for the everyday Joes like me....he does not overwhelm you with minutia and needless facts and figures...By reading this book you may not become an IRA guru but it will enable you to ask the right questions to your professional financial planner.I have passed it on to my family members to read and make their financial plans accordingly.

With terrorism being the current excuse to freeze accounts of people who later turn out to be innocent, offshore asset protection becomes important to everyone - and perhaps more so if you are an immigrant with significant assets and living in the U.S.

What I really liked about this book was that it was direct and practical - and the publisher even provided a free offshore trust with an offshore brokerage account included. I didn't have to spend lots of time trying to pursue generic advice.

The developed countries continue to chip away at the individual's privacy. Using the usual guise of "money laundering," the OECD and FATF have attempted to blackmail foreign banks and tax havens into cooperating with their tax collecting agenda. At the expense of personal privacy, they will implement the one world society. Their initiative has been launched and will continue in the months ahead.

Adam Starchild's book is one of the best ways to personally escape rather than fight this trend.

Gee, I gotta say that I disagree with the other reviewers. I was expecting a LOT more from this book. Most of what I read is available for free on the web. That left about 4 pages that I could use. ( I'm glad for those 4 pages. ) But 218 pages of double spaced typeweritten text could probably be condsensed to 50 pages in regular type, subtract 30% fluff and filler (like personal recommendations for alternatives to trusts) leaves a very quick read. One afternoon should do it. I think its WAY overpriced. I don't need the 'free' newsletter, or the 'free' trust thats included. Caution is advised.

Many people who elect to become structured offshore do so because they feel persecuted by government, claim-minded litigants, and even investigative journalists. Often it is less an election than a matter of simple survival. In spite of assurances of fair trials and opportunities to be heard, assets are at risk if they remain in your home country or if you remain within the range of the agencies or individuals that would attack you. The natural law of envy provides that the greater your success, the greater the likelihood that you will become a target for several character types, each with a different agenda but all proximately motivated by the natural law. That is, the means and immediate goals of attackers may take different forms but at root, each is driven by the natural law of envy.

Unfortunately, it is impossible for anyone, including us, to live in this world without confronting such ugliness in some form or another. Cloaked in a thousand forms of self-righteous crusading and victim restitution, all efforts share a common goal of taking away your assets. For example, armies of IRS bureaucrats, working 40 hours a week in positions with little hope of advancement, are paid to audit you and simply cannot help but enjoy the prospect of acquainting you with financial adversity. They may not personally realize economic benefit from their work, but their gratification derives from knowing that at least you will not enjoy your former wealth.

Establishing a trust is often a useful method of centralizing control of your assets during your lifetime. You may wish to establish a trust for your heirs or for your own benefit. The method you select to pass your assets on to your heirs can make all the difference in your tax position.

Trusts are a means both of reducing tax liability and of simplifying inheritance. For those not familiar with the concept, a trust or a settlement, as it is sometimes known, may be defined as a document made between a person desiring to create a trust (settlor) and one or more persons or corporations willing to act as a trustee (the trustee) in which certain assets or property (the trust fund) are declared to be held for the benefit of certain third parties (the beneficiaries).

The procedure to establish an international trust is relatively easy.

This book was OK. I must say that it was well organized and well written. It was full of information. But I can't say I particularly liked it because it was supposed to be about estate planning - not financial planning with some chapters on estate planning thrown in.

I also felt as though the book was written for wealthy people or people who aspire to spend their life building wealth (rather than enjoying life and living). Chapter 20 appeared to be addressed to very wealthy readers who might have the need and the resources to pay for an estate planning team comprised of an attorney, accountant, investment advisor, and insurance broker. Having an estate planning team is fine, but the vast majority of people will never have a need for such a team.

I suppose I should not have been surprised to see a book on financial planning written by a seasoned financial planner rather than an attorney who specializes in estate planning and tax law. But surprised I was after reading the title to the book, i.e., The COMPLETE Estate Planning Guide.

Estate planning is for people who have an estate or children that may be left parentless someday in the future. Estate planning is not strategizing how to build an estate, how to maximize their wages, how to make investments with their assets, or how to conserve their wealth. That is financial planning. And that in my humble opinion is NOT part of estate planning.

Some people never amass many assets, but they still need estate planning. And wealthy people also need estate planning. This book would have been so much better if its content had matched up to its title. 3 stars!

I disagree with the person who didn't find this book helpful. I had a parent pass away several years ago and had to quickly learn the various aspects of estate plans and found an earlier edition of this book very helpful in answering questions and guiding me in restructuring the estate to care for my mother. I had no prior knowledge of estate planning and had to learn it quickly.

I've purchased this newer version and found it just as helpful in explaining all the changes that could affect estate plans.

Each person's/family's financial situation is different, which requires personal planning (and guidance from a good estate lawyer,Financial planner and CPA). No book is going to explain how a person is going to best protect their financial situation (too many varying, individual factors), but this book addresses almost every factor to consider. It briefly explains each factor and how it works in an estate plan. One also has to consider that each state has rules, laws, regulations that alter these factors. So, again, no book is capable of addressing how state, federal, and county rules, laws, and regulations affect one's plan. However, this book does a great job at introducing and explaining almost every element a person may need to consider in planning an estate. I didn't need to know every element mentioned in this book, but as time went on I eventually found I needed to look up a few things. So it was nice to have one good reference book I knew I could go back to. Thanks Kathleen!

Very practical. Very Understandable. Everyone can use this incredibly comprehensive book; young and old.

This book is a great advocate for us busy people who don't have time to study all the things we should know about building financial security. I appreciated the part near the end about how to select advisors. In all, it left me feeling more in control of crafting the way ahead.

Most books with "estate planning" in the title deal only with the transfer of an estate. This one actually tells you now to build an estate, then what to consider when planning how best to leave it to family and charities.

I had worked with financial planners befor but I was never comfortible. Then I read about this book in the local paper. I bought it. I used it. I just hired a planner, and this time I am comfortible. This book is the reason. I recomend it!

I read Mr. Jaffe's column every week in the Boston Globe and bought this book after hearing him talk on this subject atthe Globe's personal finance conference (he autographed the book for me).

This book gave me exactly what I have come to expect from Mr. Jaffe: Clear, insightful, unafraid commentary that helped give me the courage to go through with choosing a financial planner. I learned which questions to ask, and I took the book with me and asked those questions. And while it's early to tell (Mr. Jaffe says all the time that anything less than one year is not really long enough to judge), I am happy with my financial planner and expect to stay that way for a long time.

As for the reviewer who thought this book was redundant, he must have skipped the introduction. That's where Mr. Jaffe explains why parts of the book are redundant and advises more knowledgeable investors to skip the parts that they don't need.

If you do that, this book will give you exactly what you need. It certainly did for me.

A previous reviewer who accused the book of having too much fluff is, unfortunately, only slightly exaggerating. If the author had taken the time to tighten up the book and used only half as many words as he did, the resulting book would have been first rate useful. As it is, the book is a serious test of one's patience and concentration. The ideas are very reasonable, but the reader has to struggle to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Some people might think that Jaffe's book is obvious. But what's obvious to some may be revolutionary and important to others.

The book outlines questions that should be asked of any financial proessionals one is considering hiring, and suggests interviewing at least three of each type of adviser to learn differences and to become comfortable.

Jaffe's advice is so good that it is almost impossible not to gain many times the cost of the book in better financial planning and better peace of mind that one has proceeded with due diligence.

As with many books these days, the author seems to have been desparately trying for the maximum number of pages as his primary goal. Large margins, explaining the obvious, repetition, unnecessary quotes, all add up to a book that's only about 25% actual content. If this book was 75% shorter, I'd give it two, maybe three stars. But most of the useful info in this book could be found on the web. A shorter book might have been worthwhile to avoid having to search for it on the web, but having to wade through all the fluff negates this potential benefit.

This a good corporate tax book, and I'm not saying that just because my professor (Raabe) helped write it. It is a very comprehensive look at partnerships, corporate, estate, and trust taxes. For anyone who plans on being a tax professional (CPA or adviser, not just someone doing taxes 101) then this is a great book and discusses all the issues. No it does not teach you how to prepare a form and it shouldn't. That is not being a professional. That is being a monkey. It teaches you how to think about the tax issues in a logical way. Learning how to fill out a tax form is done as a staff one in a big four firm. This class helps you once you are past that point and assists in actually helping your clients reduce their corporate taxes. Which is what is important and makes the money. As Raabe says, if you're not helping your client pay as little taxes as possible then you're not doing your job. There is a reason why corporations only pay 9% of the taxes the government handles despite the fact they make billions of dollars.

It is a very good book.

I received my book in a timely matter and it is in the condition as stated in the description.

i received the book much before that I expected Thank you very much

Maria

Great Product. Comprehensive review of corporate taxation, with great examples, research problems. Comes with CD to do tax returns. Tax problems are in text. Great way to learn to do taxes.

Okay so we're reading a book on TAXES people. This is not the latest and greatest thriller or murder mystery where you expect to be entertained. In fact, if you expected to be entertained by this book, then (a) you are way out of whack with reality or (2) you actually love tax related information. Basically put, this book is what it is, namely, a fairly comprehensive guide to the taxation of partnerships, estates and trusts. This is by no means a 'taxes for idiots' book where it shows the reader how to write some number on line 12 of some tax form and, if that's what you wanted or were looking for, then maybe you need the aforementioned idiots guide to taxes. Now if your in the trust business, a financial planner, a CPA or in some other industry that deals with taxes on a regular basis and your looking to gain some insight into recent developments as well as the specifics of taxes as described in the title, then this book will be helpful and I guarantee it will not spend a lot of time collecting dust on your bookshelf. Well at least not until the 2010 version. Enjoy!!