Archive for the ‘death’ Tag
Back to Basics Part XXXIII – Form 8889 – Health Savings Accounts (Cont.)
Filed under: Back to Basics, Healthcare Costs | Tags: beneficiary, custodian, death, directly paid, estate, Form 8889, health savings account, HSA, itemized deductions, medical expenses, nonqualified distribution, over 65, prohibited transactions, qualified distribution, reimbursement, Schedule A, Section 4975, self-dealing, separate HSA accounts, spouses
Leave a comment Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
February 19, 2016
Two weeks ago we started a discussion on Health Savings Accounts. We discussed why they are so valuable, how you qualify for an HSA, what type of an account it is, how you contribute to it, whether or not you can fund it with an IRA transfer, and what you can spend the money on and for whom. If you would like to read the article, you can find it on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog .
Do Expenses Have to Be Paid Directly From the HSA?
Another important tip is that technically you do not have to pay the medical expenses directly from the HSA account. You can reimburse yourself if needed. In fact, you can reimburse yourself at any point in the future from your HSA account for qualified expenses that were incurred at any point after you first established the HSA. It could be ten years later or more, and you can still reimburse yourself as long as you keep really good records, and can prove you did not deduct those expenses somewhere else, such as on Schedule A, or pay for them out of the HSA account in the past. Then you can reimburse yourself for them in the current year and treat the reimbursement as a qualified distribution, and not be subject to any tax or penalties.
This could come in very handy if some year you have a big expense, but do not have enough money in the account to cover it all. You could pay yourself back over a period of years. Remember, by paying the expenses out of this account, you have been able to use pretax dollars to pay for or reimburse yourself for medical expenses you incurred. That said, I would recommend always paying directly from the HSA account unless it is impossible to do so.
Should Spouses Have Separate HSA Accounts?
Here is an important pointer, if you have family coverage, you should consider setting up an HSA account for each spouse. You can only make the additional contribution for your 55 plus spouse if he has his own HSA account. There are a few other advantages to having separate accounts as well. As mentioned before, people over 65 can pay their health insurance and Medicare premiums out of their HSA, unlike people under 65. They can also pay these expenses for their spouse, or dependents, if each is over 65. However, if you were under 65 and were the only HSA account holder, and your spouse or dependent was over 65, you would not be able to pay the premiums. You would need your 65+ spouse to have an HSA account and have money in it in order to pay the premiums. You also cannot transfer money from one spouse’s HSA account to another. So you need to contribute over the years to each spouse’s account in order to prepare for this.
Another advantage of each spouse having an HSA account is for the payment of long-term care insurance. It is clear that if each spouse has an HSA, they can each pay their respective long-term care insurance subject to the normal caps. Without separate accounts, the instructions to the Form 8889 seem to imply you cannot take the deduction for a spouse.
What Happens When I Pass Away?
When you pass away, your spouse can take over the account and use it like his or her own. However, if it is left to a beneficiary other than a spouse, or is undesignated and goes to your estate, then it is considered an immediate distribution, and the entire balance is included in taxable income. It is not, however, subject to the 20 percent penalty tax. Whoever is the named beneficiary and receives the HSA money, pays the tax. If an estate receives it, it is taxable income on the decedent’s final 1040. If some other person receives it, then it is taxable to that person’s 1040. If any final medical expenses are paid from the account within one year of death, those would be qualified distributions and reduce the taxable portion.
Any Pitfalls?
Be alert to prohibited transactions covered by IRC Section 4975 – these are basically self-dealing transactions where you or someone or an entity related to you receives a special benefit in some way from the account. For instance, if you could borrow money from the account, that could be self-dealing. Fortunately, the custodian buffer will prevent you from doing a lot of things that might happen otherwise, but there are still some things you could do that would be considered self-dealing that the custodian would not know about. For instance, if you named your HSA as collateral for a personal loan. That would be a prohibited transaction, and the entire balance would be deemed distributed immediately, and it would trigger taxable income and a 20 percent penalty on the entire balance.
Form 8889
The Form 8889 itself is a fairly simple two page form. Part I deals with determining your current year deduction for contributing money to the HSA, and making sure you did not overcontribute. You add up the contributions from yourself, your employer, plus contributions to any MSAs which count toward the HSA cap, plus if you happen to do a once in a lifetime rollover from your IRA, that would get added in as well.
Part II deals with the distributions from the HSA. Here you essentially list the total distributions, and then subtract any rollovers to other HSA custodians, and subtract any qualified medical expenses. Anything left over would generally be a nonqualified distribution subject to the 20 percent penalty unless one of the exceptions applies – turning 65, becoming disabled, or passing away.
Part III calculates the penalty for overcontributing due to changes in your health insurance coverage status.
If you have questions about other schedules or forms in your tax returns, prior articles in our Back to Basics series on personal tax returns are republished on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog .
Travis H. Long, CPA, Inc. is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. Travis can be reached at 831-333-1041. This article is for educational purposes. Although believed to be accurate in most situations, it does not constitute professional advice or establish a client relationship.
Sale of a Residence After Death – Part II
Filed under: Residence Sale | Tags: appraisal, basis, community property, death, decedent, fair market value, fractional ownership, irrevocable trust, joint tenancy, personal residence, revocable trust, rights of survivorship, sale, section 121, sole ownership, step-down, step-up, surviving spouse, survivor, tenancy in common, tenants in common
Comments (10) Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
April 5, 2013
Two weeks ago we discussed the sale of a personal residence after someone passes away when held as joint tenants or community property. We also discussed the concept of a cost basis step up (or down) to the current fair market value at death as it relates to joint tenancy, community property, and tenancy in common. If you missed this article you can find it on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog. This week we are going to discuss what happens when a sole owner or tenant in common passes away and the house or fractional interest in a house goes to their trust or estate.
Often children are tasked with figuring out what to do with mom or dad’s house after the second spouse passes. Names like executor, executrix, and trustee get thrown around and sometimes you get to know your accountant and attorney better than if you had gone on a fishing trip together! After death, the house typically become part of the estate if there was no trust in place, and if there was, then it becomes part of an irrevocable trust that has the task of winding up affairs and distributing the assets to the beneficiaries (or trusts for the beneficiaries).
If the surviving spouse held the house as a sole owner or in his or her revocable trust before death, the house receives a full step-up (or down) in basis to the current fair market value at death. If the house is distributed outright to a beneficiary (or beneficiaries) and then the beneficiary immediately sells the home, you often will have a loss due to the real estate commissions and other sales expenses (or perhaps even a market decline between date of death and the sale as we saw so often over the past five years). This loss, however, will generally be a nondeductible personal loss unless you first convert it to a rental property, and then sell it later.
If, however, it is decided the house needs to be sold while it is still in the estate or trust in order to pay debts or to distribute the proceeds to various beneficiaries, you may have a case to take a deductible loss on the sale of the property (which would offset other taxable income in the estate or trust, or perhaps flow through to the beneficiaries reducing their personal taxes). Fair warning, the IRS and the courts disagree on this issue!
The IRS has taken the position that even a trust or estate cannot take a loss unless it is a rental property or converted to a rental property and then sold. However, this conflicts with some of the instructions they provide regarding capital assets held by trusts and estates. The courts, on the other hand, have held that a trust or estate does not hold personal assets, and thus is allowed to take a loss on the sale of what used to be the decedent’s personal residence as long as no beneficiaries live in the property in the interim. There are other issues to consider here, but in the right circumstances, strategic planning could create some large tax savings.
If a tenant in common passes away, his or her ownership percentage receives a step in basis to the current fair market value and the interest flows through to the estate or trust. Similar results would occur as those just discussed for sole owners. It is less common to find someone holding a personal residence as a tenant in common, especially with unrelated people. It also comes with other, more complicated issues, since fractionalizing ownership in a house diminishes the value – basically, who wants to buy a house with other people you don’t know? In all cases after someone passes away, date-of-death appraisals are requisite, and you may need specialized appraisers for fractional interest properties.
This really just scratches the surface of the issues you can encounter, and it is always best to find a CPA and attorney team that is equipped to handle these issues appropriately.
IRS Circular 230 Notice: To the extent this article concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law.
Travis H. Long, CPA is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
Sale of a Residence After Death – Part I
Filed under: General, Residence Sale | Tags: appraisal, basis, community property, death, decedent, fair market value, joint tenancy, personal residence, rights of survivorship, sale, section 121, step-down, step-up, survivor, tenancy in common
Comments (2) Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
March 22, 2013
When a living individual sells a personal residence that results in a gain, many people are familiar with the rules which may allow an exclusion of the taxable gain of up to $250,000 ($500,000 if married filing joint) if the taxpayer lived in the property two out of the last five years as his or her primary residence. In the depressed real estate markets over the past few years, many people have also learned (sometimes to much dismay) that a loss on a personal residence is not deductible.
But what happens when a house is sold after someone passes away?
The first thing we need to do is determine the cost basis. At the date of death, the cost basis of the property changes to whatever the current fair market value (FMV) is (an appraisal is required – not a market analysis by a real estate agent). If the house is held in joint tenancy or tenancy in common, only the decedent’s share of the home gets a step up (or down) in basis to the current FMV, and the basis for the survivor’s original share does not change.
If, however, it is held as community property, the entire interest in the house gets a step in basis to the current FMV. If the property is held “with rights of survivorship” then the house passes immediately to the survivor which in turn inherits the new stepped up (or down) basis of the decedent to add to his or her own basis-in the case of joint tenancy or tenancy in common, or he or she takes the new FMV as the new basis if it was community property.
When the property is sold, the survivor reports the sales price less the new basis and selling expenses. If it was sold soon after death, the survivor often realizes a loss due to sales expenses if they got a full step-up in basis (albeit nondeductible if maintained as a personal residence). If the survivor realizes a gain, then, the survivor is eligible for the $250,000 exclusion assuming he or she meets all the normal rules. If it was a spouse that passed away, then the widow or widower would have two years from the date of death to sell the house and still be eligible for the $500,000 exclusion.
In two weeks we will discuss the more interesting scenarios that play out when the property is not held “with rights of survivorship” and the property goes to the individual’s estate or trust, such as is often the case at the death of a single individual or the death of the second spouse.
Remember, it is always best to seek competent advice as everybody’s tax situation is unique and there are more rules that could affect you than just those mentioned in this article.
Prior articles are republished on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog.
IRS Circular 230 Notice: To the extent this article concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law.
Travis H. Long, CPA is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
