Estate Planning and Trusts

Estate planning allows you to protect the interests of your family and loved ones, while minimizing or eliminating estate taxes, inheritance taxes and probate fees. It is a fairly complex area of taxation. During the past several years we have seen many changes to estate laws and taxes. It is therefore important to have professional accountants involved with your tax and estate planning process. KSC Inc. and his team are trained to guide you through this process and provide you and your family with the most flexible options.

To help achieve your estate planning goals, a trust can be set up. There are several different types of trusts. We work with your lawyer to establish the ideal trust for your situation. Often, we can reduce estate taxes or inheritance taxes by using a structure involving one or more trusts.

Of paramount importance is maintaining family harmony and, if required, proper succession planning for a business. We have both tax expertise and practical experience with estate planning and family business enterprises, and provide a range of tax services for estates and trusts:

  • Customized estate planning to address specific client situations
  • Probate fee planning
  • Advice on the use of trusts, including family, alter ego, and spousal trusts
  • Mitigation of double taxation exposure through post-mortem planning
  • Assisting executors or trustees with the administration of estates and trusts
  • Preparing financial statements for estates and trusts
  • Preparing date of death returns and other optional returns
  • Preparing income tax and information returns for trusts
  • Advice on charitable giving, including the use of private foundations

When you work with us we want to: ensure that you and your family have control over who oversees the estate, explain what you can expect to pay in estate fees and keep these fees to a minimum, allow your family to receive money and property from the estate in the least stressful and costly matter, review your Will with you and help you update or change the document according to your wishes, anticipate and avoid any family conflict that may arise after death, and implement a tax planning strategy that will minimize the taxes of the estate.

Preparing yourself and your family to plan for your estate can be a daunting task. We will guide you, step-by-step, through the process of establishing an effective estate plan.