Gifts of Retirement Assets

Tax-deferred retirement-plan benefits are great sources of retirement income, but not always a good choice for making gifts to children and grandchildren. You may consider using retirement-plan benefits to make a significant gift that will support Denison. And because of the estate and income tax treatment of retirement plan benefits, the cost of your gift to your estate and heirs is often relatively small.

Retirement-plan benefits include assets held in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and assets held in accounts under 401(k) plans, profit-sharing plans, Keogh plans, and 403(b) plans.Income taxes on retirement-plan benefits are deferred but not avoided. That means as these assets are withdrawn during retirement by the account owner or the account owner's spouse, they are subject to income tax.

In addition, retirement-plan benefits left to children, grandchildren, and other beneficiaries at the death of the account owner are subject to both income tax and estate tax. This combination of income taxes and estate taxes can result in a tax hit equal to 75 percent or more of the retirement-plan benefits.

Example: Bill Woods accumulates $1 million in retirement-plan assets. Upon his death at age 73, he leaves them to his two children. Because of the tax bite, however, the amount Bill's children receive, after taxes, could be less than $250,000.

By contrast, Bill could have left the $1 million to Denison, and the entire amount would have been available to create a scholarship or fund another of his favorite programs.

  • Planning pointer: Retirement-plan benefits can also be used to fund a qualified charitable remainder trust for the benefit of a spouse. If the surviving spouse is designated beneficiary of the trust payments for his or her life, then the entire value of the trust, regardless of its size, will be deductible for estate-tax purposes.
Since a qualified charitable remainder trust is a tax-exempt entity, it does not have to pay any income tax on the receipt of the retirement-plan benefits. Thus, the full value of the retirement-plan benefits will be available to provide payments to the surviving spouse.