You’ve made it: You put in the time, worked hard, and now you’re leading a high-performing team at a blue-chip tech company. You’ve reached the point where your annual income is outpacing your everyday needs, and even your usual wants. So what now?
For most people in this situation, financial planning becomes a multi-layered pursuit — you max out your 401(k), of course, you give to your kids’ 529 account, you slip in a mega-backdoor Roth — but you’ve still got significant excess income. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but there is an undesirable side effect: Earlier in your career, those basic planning tools helped you offset a significant portion of your taxable income, but that’s no longer the case. Today, it looks like you’re going to be stuck with a massive tax bill.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this article, we’ll explain how you can use a Charitable Lead Annuity Trust like an uncapped 401(k) or IRA, to shield as much as 60% of your ordinary income from federal and state taxes.
At a basic level, a CLAT is simple:
By putting your assets or cash into a CLAT and setting it up to pay out to charity very slowly, you can back-load your tax obligation, pay a very small amount (typically just on the dividend income) every year, and defer your big tax bill for 20 years or more. (You’ll owe taxes when you liquidate your assets, which could be at the end of the trust’s term or later, if you take your remainder distribution in kind.)
Why does this work? In exchange for these promised donations, the government allows you to take a large up-front deduction — as much as 100% of the amount you put into the trust (up to 60% of your family’s Adjusted Gross Income). Although the math is complicated, the IRS is essentially calculating the value, in today's dollars, of all of the money you pledge to give to charity over the term of the trust; by back-loading those payments, you can reinvest the money and earn much more than what the IRS is requiring you to donate.
For those interested in the math, the tax mitigation arbitrage comes from two areas:
We know this is complicated, so let's dive into a real-life example!
Take Peter, who lives in Mountain View and has risen to Director of Engineering at Google. His income has crept up over time, and today his total compensation is about $1 million per year. (Let’s assume for clarity’s sake that that’s Peter’s family’s entire taxable income.) All of that income, of course, is taxed at the highest federal and state rates, and, as a result, he’s paying a 46.6% effective tax rate. That's a big hit.
There's good news, though: Peter can use a CLAT to eliminate much of his ordinary income this year, reinvest that money now, and pay most of his taxes at a lower tax rate far in the future.
If he does nothing, Peter owe the federal government about $359,000 in taxes, and California will get another $106,000, for a total tax bill of $465,000. That number is painful to stomach, and he would like to do some tax-deferral planning so he can keep investing and growing his assets instead of sending just about half of them out the door.
Let's walk through how he can do that.
Annual family income: $1,000,000
Expected Taxes: $465,000
Gift to Trust: $500,000
Up-Front Deduction: $500,000
Expected Returns after 25 years (assuming a 9% annual growth rate over the term of the trust):
Baseline (that is, not using a trust): $1,797,000
CLAT: $2,314,000 (28% more)
We'll show you how Peter can earn an additional $517,000, or about 28% additional returns, using a CLAT.
The primary benefit Peter will receive from putting his shares into a CLAT is an immediate tax deduction. He will get to deduct 100% of the current value of the assets he puts into the trust (assuming that amounts to less than 60% of his family’s adjusted gross income; if it’s more, he can spread the deduction out over multiple years). In this case, that's a $500,000 deduction that translates into a cash savings of about $230,000 on his taxes this year. Critically, Peter gets to reinvest that money instead of paying it to the government.
Every year, the trust will make a small donation to the charity of Peter’s choice. (Recall that these promised donations are why the government allows you to take a large up-front deduction; although the math is complicated, the IRS is essentially calculating the value, in today's dollars, of all of the money you pledge to give to charity over the term of the trust.)
Following the IRS’s prescribed procedure, that small donation to charity will start in the low four figures and grow 20% per year. Peter’s donations will total $912,000 over 25 years.
But if Peter is going to have to donate more than $900,000 to charity in exchange for a $500,000 deduction, where's the benefit of this strategy? The key is that, by taking the deduction on day 1 and deferring the majority of the donation, he gets to reinvest and grow his money for 25 years. Yes, he'll end up donating more than the initial amount he put into the trust, but he gets to benefit from the magic of compounding in the meantime. He eliminates about $230,000 in taxes at the beginning, reinvests that money for 25 years which ends up far exceeding the $900,000 in donations, and gets to reap the gains in the end.
Indeed, in the final year, after making his annual donations, Peter will receive all of the assets remaining in the trust — about $2.3 million on a pre-tax basis. Moreover, he won’t necessarily have to pay taxes on that amount on the day the trust ends; the trust can distribute the assets in kind, and he can continue to let them grow in the market until he needs the liquidity.
One of the first questions our customers ask us about CLATs is the following: "These gains are great, but my money will be locked up for the entire term of the trust. So what's the use case?" It's true that, unlike a Charitable Remainder Trust, a Charitable Lead Trust does hold your money for the trust's entire term. For that reason, most people think of a 15-, 20-, or 30-year CLAT like a retirement savings account or IRA, with the assumption that they’ll use the proceeds in retirement.
What would all of these tax savings, investment gains, and donations mean for Peter's bottom line? After 25 years, Peter expects to end up with about $2.2 million in total payouts. About $900,000 will go to the charity of his choice — that's the bargain he struck when he chose a Charitable Lead Annuity Trust.
If, instead, Peter had paid his taxes up front and reinvested the remainder — about $270,000 — in a regular, taxable investment account, he would have ended up with about $1.8 million. In other words, even after making what can only be described as a very generous donation to charity, Peter still pockets an extra $500,000, all because he used a Charitable Lead Annuity Trust.
We built a platform to give everyone access to the tax and wealth building tools of the ultra-rich like Mark Zuckerberg and Phil Knight. We make it simple and seamless for our customers to take advantage of these hard to access tax advantaged structures so you can build your wealth more efficiently at less than half the cost of competitors. From picking the best strategy to taking care of all the setup and ongoing overhead, we make it easy and have helped create more than $500m in wealth for our customers. Schedule a time to chat with our team and learn more about how we can help you!