Over the past several months, we have been involved in assisting several clients transfer parcels of real property for a litany of strategic and/or estate planning concerns. The transfers in question have involved transferring property interests to or from a living trust and limited liability companies/corporations that we have helped the client form and organize with the California Secretary of State.
One issue that we have noticed that largely goes undetected while analyzing prospective real property transfers is the impact on transfer taxes and reassessment by the local Assessor’s office. While a full summary of the exemptions available from transfer tax and reassessment would be too voluminous to outline in this entry, it bears emphasizing that the California Revenue & Taxation Code identifies several available exemptions from both the imposition of transfer tax and the subsequent reassessment of real property.
Often times, with some advance planning and strategic thinking about how best to structure a real property transfer, we can find statutory exemptions available to our client, who might otherwise pay significant amounts of money in unnecessary transfer taxes and unwarranted reassessments of their real property interests.
This is just one more consideration to keep in mind when analyzing a prospective transfer of real property for strategic/estate planning factors.
