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Updated February 07, 2023 Reviewed by Reviewed by Lea D. UraduLea Uradu, J.D. is a Maryland State Registered Tax Preparer, State Certified Notary Public, Certified VITA Tax Preparer, IRS Annual Filing Season Program Participant, and Tax Writer.
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The generation-skipping transfer tax is a federal tax on a gift or inheritance that prevents the donor from avoiding estate taxes by skipping children in favor of grandchildren. With the generation-skipping transfer tax, grandchildren receive the same amount as if the inheritance were coming from their parents.
Before the generation-skipping transfer tax was introduced in 1976, wealthy individuals were legally able to gift money and bequeath property to their grandchildren, without paying federal estate taxes. The legislation effectively closed the loophole where inheritances could skip a generation to avoid double estate taxation.
The generation-skipping transfer tax (GSTT) is an additional tax on a transfer of property that skips a generation, known as a generation-skipping transfer (GST) for short. The GSTT was implemented to prevent families from avoiding the estate tax for one or more generations by making gifts or bequests directly to grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
The parent's generation is skipped to avoid an inheritance being subject to estate taxes twice. The GSTT ensures that grandchildren end up with the same value of assets that they would have had if the inheritance was transferred to them directly from their parents, rather than their grandparents.
The person giving the gift is referred to as the transferor and the recipient is known as the skip person. Many people use a grandchild as a skip person, but a skip person does not have to be a family member. Any individual is eligible to receive a generation-skipping transfer as long as they are at least 37½ years younger than the transferor.
The generation-skipping transfer tax is imposed only if the transfer avoids incurring a gift or estate tax at each generation level. To make up for the taxes that may be avoided by skipping one generation, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) imposes a second layer of tax on gifts and bequests above the estate and lifetime gift exclusion. It means that the GSTT is only due when a beneficiary receives amounts in excess of the GST estate tax credit.
The taxation of a GST depends on whether the transfer is a direct or an indirect skip. A direct skip is a property transfer that's subject to an estate or gift tax. An example of a direct skip would be a grandmother gifting property to a grandchild. The transferor or their estate is responsible for paying the GST tax for direct skips.
An indirect skip involves a transfer that has intermediate steps before reaching a skip person. There are two types of indirect skips: the taxable termination and the taxable distribution.
A taxable termination involves a skip person and a non-skip person. A non-skip person is the primary beneficiary who will receive property before it is transferred to the skip person. The transfer to the skip person occurs upon the death of a non-skip person—typically the child of the transferor.
As an example of a taxable termination, consider a transferor who establishes an income-producing trust for his son. Upon the son's death, the remaining property would be passed on to the transferor's grandchild, at which time those assets would be subject to the GST tax.
A taxable distribution refers to any distribution of income or property, from a trust to a skip person that is not otherwise subject to estate or gift tax. If a grandmother established a trust that made payments to her grandson, those payments would be subject to GST taxes, which the recipient is responsible for paying.
In the past, the GSTT has been hefty, ranging from 35% to 77%. The current rate, which has been in effect since 2014, is 40%; however, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act dramatically lessened the estates that might be affected by it. For 2022, the federal estate, gift, and GSTT exemption is $12.06 million for each individual ($12.92 million in 2023) and $24.12 million for married couples ($25.84 million in 2023), more than doubling the pre-TCJA limit of $5.49 million (for individuals).
Some states also collect generation-skipping transfer taxes, generally the ones that impose their own estate taxes.
Only the value of a person’s estate that is in excess of the applicable exemption is subject to an estate tax at death or the GSTT, at that flat rate of 40%. So only aggregate gifts and bequests to a skip person in excess of $12.06 million in 2022 ($12.92 million in 2023) would be subject to the 40% flat generation-skipping transfer tax.
The GSTT is assessed when the gift or property transfer is made; GSTs can occur before or after the death of the transferor. While still alive, the transferor can give the gift directly to the skip person. But upon death, the transferor's will may either stipulate that property is bequeathed to a skip person, or it may call for the establishment of a trust from which distributions will be made. Form 709 is used to report both GST taxes and transfers whereby federal gift taxes are due.
Most beneficiaries will avoid the GST tax because the estates they inherit will be worth less than the government-provided estate tax credit. The GSTT exemption is very high (as noted above).
However, in cases where the tax could apply, transferors can create dynasty trusts, which are designed to avoid or minimize estate taxes with each generational transfer. By parking assets in the trust and making specified distributions to each generation, the corpus of the trust isn’t subject to estate taxes with the transfer.
The generation-skipping transfer tax is triggered when a person gifts another person an asset but skips a generation in doing so. For example, when a person gifts a home to their grandchild and skips their child.
The generation-skipping transfer tax is paid by either the grantor or the skipped beneficiary. The grantor pays the direct generation-skipping tax while an indirect generation-skipping tax is paid by the skipped beneficiary. The former is the most common scenario.
A parent can gift a child tax-free $16,000 in 2022. In 2023, the amount is $17,000. This is per parent and per recipient.
