Attorney Eric Rothenberg was quoted in The Wall Street Journal recently in an article titled “The Great Property (and Tax) Comeback”.  We’ve provided an excerpt below and you may read the entire article here.

March 28, 2014

Higher real-estate prices normally spell good news for sellers, but there’s an associated cost that many tend to forget: A property will probably generate much higher estate taxes upon the owner’s death than it would have a few years ago. What’s more, estate taxes have been rising faster than property prices and asset values—and, some experts say, they are likely to rise even further. Yet some legal maneuvering may help cushion the blow.

Some experts prefer the LLC route. Over time, it can allow for a “substantial wealth transfer at no cost to the parent,” says Eric Rothenberg, a tax attorney with a law firm based in Needham, Mass. But the big issue with an LLC is determining how much of a discount can be claimed on each share. In the past, some have claimed a discount of as much as 40 percent, meaning they have transferred $100,000 worth of shares for as little as $60,000 in taxable value…