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Syllabus for Estate & Gift Tax

Spring Semester only – 16 weeks and an exam week

February 1st week until last week May

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

Estate & Gift (3 cr. Spring only): Estate & Gift Tax addresses the foundational issues: definition of taxable gifts; timing; estate tax exclusions and deductions; components of the gross estate and determination of the taxable estate of a decedent, including issues of lifetime transfers; valuation issues; deductions from the taxable estate with special emphasis on property passing to a spouse; an overview of generation-skipping transfer taxation; estate freezes. Suggested prerequisites are Tax Procedure or Tax I unless the student is an experienced tax practitioner and receives permission from the Director. Advanced practitioners should rather take International Estate Planning.

II. PURPOSE

Estate & Gift is an LLM executive level course. This course will be taught at the executive level and will employ case studies beyond IRC analysis.

* 3 credits
* elective

III. COURSE PROCEDURE

This course will be taught by a combination of faculty members and will involve fourteen weekly modules that are delivered through on-line instruction pursuant to current program specifications. Each module will contain text material, study guide instruction, and weekly interactive participation. Text material may contain a combination of code sections, cases, and commentary materials. Study guides will contain commentary materials upon the text materials with imbedded exercises and assignments to be completed either independently or within a group of two to five persons. Assignments may be submitted directly to the Instructor or submitted to the classroom.

Each module, selected students may be called upon to deliver answers in the Internet based classroom to questions posed by the instructor. Questions may be posed in case study form or in issue form. Answers may be short (one page) form or long form (five page analysis).

During the semester, module based audio and videotape lecture construction will be explored as well as the provision to students through streaming technology.

During the sixteen-week semester, the students will have two technology skills and control weeks. The first week of the course, the student will spend the time acquiring and testing the necessary accessing components of the course, including: blackboard skills, database access, proxy server access, material download, and other technical issues. Also, students will introduce themselves and identify with each other (camaraderie and network building). During the third week, students will be given another breather week to check the quality of their acquired technology technical skills and offsite database access in order to identify any problem areas that require immediate correcting.

During the semester, each student will receive at least two detailed feedback sessions from the Instructor through the detailed marking of his/her/group study guide assignments and/or class participation. Separately, the Instructor is available for office hour private counseling through email, telephone, and by residential office appointment.

Other assignments may receive feedback and will receive a grade, recorded in the online grade book that students may assess their performance.
IV. ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION

This online course requires attendance which is measured by (1) the modular-weekly interactive participation opportunities in the classroom, (2) mandatory weekly participation through being called upon to address the class for certain modules as well as (3) modular study guide assignments. Missing mandatory weekly participation assignments is the equivalent of being not prepared in class and will result in a zero for that assignment. Not turning in study guide assignments will result in a zero for that assignment.

V. EVALUATION OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Grades will be determined through a combination of factors, as follows:

final exam – 50%;

weekly study guide assignments – 25%

weekly participation – 25%
VI. REQUIRED TEXTS

Electronic texts edited and authored by the Instructor, supplemented by reference materials. Reference materials will include source materials and secondary materials.
VII. REFERENCE MATERIAL

Research is conducted using the Internet WWW as well as, and most importantly, value added databases, such as

*

Lexis-Nexis US and foreign materials; Tax Treaties
*

BNA US and foreign materials; especially the country by country tax materials
*

BNA International
*

CCH International databases jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and its global treatises
*

CCH USA databases
*

Butterworths UK and international materials, especially Commonwealth/Caribbean case law
*

QuickLaw, especially Canadian and Commonwealth/Caribbean case law
*

Checkpoint-RIA-WGL-Gee, especially the treatises that explain planning techniques by topics, such as estate planning, for jurisdictions
*

Westlaw US and foreign materials
*

Tax Analysts, especially its superior tax treaty database, foreign law and global tax update magazines
*

Foreign Law Publishers - all foreign statues in English
*

World Compliance database
*

LLM and PhD thesis and dissertation databases
*

historical tax research using databases such as Hein and CCH
*

Matthew Bender databases
*

Lois Law e-libraries
*

amongst other databases that we subscribe to for you (see the external links in the classroom for details).

Also, the student should use the electronic book libraries and research the titles available. Finally, the student is encouraged to use the St Thomas law school or university library or another library through a University library exchange program.

VIII. WEEKLY SYLLABUS

Module 1: Overview

Module 2: Gifts

Module 3: Property Owned by Decedent at Death

Module 4: Retained Interests, I

Module 5: Retained Interests, II / Annuities

Module 6: Life Insurance / Non-U.S. Citizens

Module 7: Powers of Appointment / Charitable Deduction

Module 8: Marital Deduction

Module 9: Other Deductions

Module 10: Computations of Gift and Estate Tax Liability

Module 11: Generation-Skipping Tax

Module 12: Estate Freeze Rules

Module 13: Valuation

Module 14: Valuation Issues