Calculating Estate Taxes & Reviewing Your Options

Please remember our site conditions of use. We are not in the business of rendering legal or accounting services; as such, all materials and suggestions should be reivewed with your professional before use.

The gross value of the estate: all assets that were owned by the individual, business interests, life insurance, household goods, personal property, real estate, promissory notes, cash accounts, market assests such as stocks, bonds, etc., partnership interests, and all jointly owned properties. Many times people feel that life insurance is not included in the gross estate, but the death value is included in the owner's estate. The beneficiary will recieve the death value income tax free. (It is usually best for each spouse to own the other's policy; this would exclude the death values from the gross estate of the one who may happen to die. If the owner of a life policy is a trust or charitable organization, it would be excluded from the gross estate.)