How can I avoid paying unnecessary taxes?
I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to avoid paying unnecessary taxes. And I'm going to talk to you about being charitable. When a client family comes to me and they say, "We want to draft our last will and testament or our revocable trust," whichever document they end up using, and we want to include a charitable gift. One of the first things that I look for in their estate assets is if they have an IRA, an individual retirement account or a 401k or four or three B, any kind of tax deferred account. Because what I want to do is to make sure that if we can take the charitable gift from that account, the reason why is if the children inherit an IRA, they're going to pay ordinary income taxes on it, just like their parents did when they pulled out money. But when a charity inherits an IRA or a part of one, the charity doesn't pay taxes.
                    
So the charity gets the full benefit of every dollar because no taxes come out. So if you are going to make a charitable gift in your last will and testament, talk to your attorney about possibly funding it from a tax deferred retirement account. Another thing that you can look at in terms of being charitable while you're alive is if you have an IRA, and if you are at the age where you are required to take the money out, and you also are charitable every year to an organization or to a church, you can arrange with the IRA company and your charity to make a direct contribution to the charity. And the charity will not pay taxes and neither will you. So this is a nice way, again, to use every dollar of that money, but do it in a charitable gift.
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