When you are inventorying your assets and evaluating the overall value of your estate you may find that it exceeds the estate tax exclusion. At that point it is time to implement strategies to gain estate tax efficiency, and one of these is the practice of tax-free gift giving. If you give away assets to your heirs while you are still alive you can avoid the death tax, right?
Well, the answer is yes and no. The government doesn't want you to do this, so there is a gift tax to close the loophole. Plus, they have unified the estate tax and the gift tax. There is a million lifetime gift tax exclusion in place for 2011 and 2012,
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