Estate Freeze is among the top solutions to reduce your asset taxes. With proper planning, lawyers, accounting, and financial advisors, many businesses experience assets growth. You can consult our professional Brampton Business Lawyer for the best advice.  

Estate Freeze is a process that will freeze your assets at today’s value. Now there are several advantages to that. Your share exchange will help any new shareholders take forward the company’s growth in the future; most often, it’s the next generation. The entire process focuses on saving on taxes in the future if the shareholders decide to sell them or maybe transfer them to someone else. 

Estate Freeze not only provides benefits during the lifetime, but also after the shareholder passes away. During a freezer’s lifetime, it’s not uncommon to split the gains and capitals among the coming generation or trustworthy shareholders that eventually gives one access to the marginal tax rate. 

In case of sharing the freeze further to the next generation or a spouse, one can include them as a ‘Beneficiary’ of the trust. This way, if there’s any growth in the company’s future, it will be automatically shifted to the shareholders. So if you are interested in going for an Estate Freeze, you can consider some of the benefits given below. They will help you understand why and how Estate Freeze can provide advantages in terms of taxes and life insurance and help you gain from freezing your estate at current value. 

Benefits of Estate Freeze

Now freezing estate at its existing value can come with several benefits. The top 3 Benefits of Estate Freeze are given below- 

1. Tax Liability & Insurance

One of the commonly used strategies is to use Life Insurance to plan for the tax liability. It’s an effective way of planning an estate in case a shareholder dies. Estate Freeze provides a ‘fixed value’ tax used for purposes such as planning for Life Insurance. This way, one can make sure that the next generation is not under-insured or over insured. This is something that you can think of while planning for an Estate Freeze. 

• Waste-Away Estate Freezing

Waste-Away Estate Freezing is a process that helps you generate income after retirement. You can also reduce your tax liability at the time of death. It is an effective way of tax savings if the first generation shareholders decide to ‘waste away’ a certain amount for a prolonged period. If the amount adds up to huge sums, then the tax benefit will follow. When you waste away or redeem the value of shares, you can expect the estate to give you large tax benefits. 

• Tax Deferral

The term ‘Tax Deferral’ refers to a scenario where the taxpayers can delay paying tax to a future date. It is not uncommon for taxes to be deferred indefinitely or reduced in the future. So estate freezing can provide flexibility to the shareholders regarding future growth and ease in passing down the estate to the next generation. 

If this is kept in mind, one can expect the current value to provide millions in tax deferral. This is another benefit you can consider while going for an Estate freeze.

Why Do Professionals Freeze Estate?

The purpose of doing so is to pass down the estate at current value to the next generation. This way, when the future value of an asset increases, the shareholders can get maximum benefits. 

The one who transfers the estate gets to retain the existing value of shares and can delay or defer the income taxes on that gains made on capital to the actual time of their disposition. For the best advice and consultancy, you can contact our business lawyers in Bampton who can help you properly strategize and plan when it comes to Estate Freeze. 

There has been an increase in the number of shareholders going for estate planning due to their benefits. Estate Freeze gives the owners a chance to pass down the estate to the next generation. 

Freezing the estate entitles the previous actual owner to the estate’s current value while allowing the shareholders to enjoy its future growth benefits. Doing so provides tax deferrals on the future value of the estate if it increases. There are even more benefits of an estate freeze that you should know of before consulting our business lawyer for Brampton. 

1. Estate Freeze reduces one’s taxes at death. Then the future growth of the company is transferred to the common shareholders. 
2. It is a great way of using a family trust by splitting the income throughout the family. 
3. It only freezes the value, but the owner gets to keep the parent control while providing benefits to the shareholders. 
4. The Lifetime Capital Gains exemption gets multiplied.
5. It reduces any probate fees since the frozen estate’s future growth does not exist as part of the shareholder’s estate. So they are not subjected to the probate fees, thus reducing the overall probate fees on the frozen estate. 
6. Another great benefit is that when you freeze the asset, the estate’s future growth is held among the shareholders or the trust. This protects it from the creditors. 

These additional benefits of Estate Freeze are what attract many businesses to plan their estate strategically. 

Conclusion 

You must have already gotten the idea of how advantageous Estate Freeze is in the long term. To summarize everything that’s written in this article, one can say that Estate Freeze allows one to pass down the future growth of the business to children or a trust. 

After passing, the parent continues to participate in the estate growth if everything is planned properly. The parent/owner also continues to own control over the estate, being a trustee of the family. And it all eventually benefits both the owner and the shareholders during taxes.  So, if you plan to go for Estate Freeze, we’d recommend you go for the best legal advice that you can get from our Business Lawyer. You can contact us for our legal consultancy. Our lawyers are among the top business lawyers in Brampton. To get started, contact us now.