Rebecca MacGregor

Designing a real estate investor’s plan to reduce taxes

A commercial real estate property investor, William, has benefited from Rebecca’s creativity to achieve his goals. Each of his commercial and residential properties are owned by separate LLCs, which are owned by a Family Holding LLC, which is owned 50% by his revocable trust and 50% by his spouse’s revocable trust. This design results in multiple estate and gift tax discounts because the various LLC agreements provide for lack of marketability and/or a minority interest discounts.

Due to uncertainty over future tax law, William is taking advantage of gifting the differential in the estate tax lifetime exemption amount before it sunsets in 2025 or is changed sooner by Congress, leaving approximately $6 million as the differential to gift now from each of their revocable trusts to each other’s spousal lifetime access irrevocable trusts.

Multi-generational planning for a best-selling author

A New York Times best-selling author of over 20 medical thriller novels, Michael, has worked with Rebecca for many years to protect the interests of himself and his family. She set up a trust to own the copyrights, receive the royalties, and to provide for multi-generational management and allocated the generation skipping tax to the trust. Since his passing, she continues to work closely with his three children and other family members by serving as independent trustee.

Rebecca has represented multiple authors, including establishing LLCs to own the copyrights, negotiating book contracts for hard copies, paperback, e-books, audio books, and for translations in Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa.

Helping professors reduce taxes and preserve wealth

Several professors from respected colleges and universities rely on Rebecca for estate planning. This representation typically includes designing and implementing an estate plan for incapacity planning, wealth transfer, and reduction in estate, gift, and income taxes.

Many professors, such as Rebecca’s client Elizabeth, wish to give back in a tax efficient manner. Rebecca has drafted charitable remainder annuity trusts to make an irrevocable gift of appreciated assets to the trust, which then sells the assets, and reinvests the proceeds into a diversified brokerage account. Because Elizabeth donated the appreciated assets, she did not pay capital gains on the sale. In addition, in the year of the gift, she took an income tax deduction for the present value of the remainder interest of the trust. During the lifetime of Elizabeth, the trust distributes guaranteed fixed payments to her, then upon her death the remainder of the trust property is distributed to the university.

Ever the inquisitive group, Rebecca believes that professors like working with her because she “does well at answering their questions as to why she recommends one strategy over another.”