Gift Planning combines financial planning, estate planning, and tax planning techniques to enable people to make gifts of surprising significance, often with dramatic tax and financial rewards.

When Should I Give?

Many people plan gifts at year-end to provide important tax deductions. Or they may find charitable contributions most helpful in years when they have a large influx of taxable income, from a bonus, sale of a business or successful investment, or inheritance of taxable assets such as savings bonds or IRAs.

The most practical time to make significant gifts may be through your estate plan, by means of a will, living trust, or beneficiary designation on a life insurance policy or retirement account.

We invite you to explore with us the many sides of your own planned giving and the meaning your personal philanthropy can have for both you and your future!

What Should I Give?

There are different tax results from giving different types of property. Consider, for example, highly appreciated securities.  If stocks have been owned for more than one year, then donors can deduct not just their original cost but also any “paper profit” present in the gift.  Best of all, no capital gains taxes are due when you give securities.  Real estate, mutual funds, and other types of property offer the same advantages.  At death, it makes sense to leave tax-burdened assets, such as U.S. savings bonds and death benefits from retirement accounts, to charities. This allows heirs to avoid income and death taxes.  

Life insurance, in addition to providing family protection and peace of mind, offers a multitude of other benefits.  You can keep lifetime ownership rights in a policy, but name us the beneficiary or partial beneficiary.  Your estate will be entitled to a charitable deduction for the proceeds passed to us.  

You can also give a partial interest in property and receive an immediate income tax deduction.

For example, You could make us the owner of a 10% interest in your vacation home.  (In order to qualify for the tax deduction, you would have to contribute a 10% interest in every ownership right, including the right to use the property).  However, the real benefit is that whenever the property is sold, we will receive 10% of the proceeds–even if the sale doesn’t occur until after your death.  And the real benefit to you is a deduction of about 10% of the value of the gift property. 

*Please consult your financial advisor for current information, as St. Mary’s Cathedral is unable to give financial advice.