{"id":5975,"date":"2026-10-16T12:10:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T16:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=5975"},"modified":"2026-10-16T12:10:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T16:10:51","slug":"keep-it-or-gift-it-rethinking-lifetime-gifts-of-equipment-yards-and-real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/keep-it-or-gift-it-rethinking-lifetime-gifts-of-equipment-yards-and-real-estate.html","title":{"rendered":"Keep It or Gift It? Rethinking Lifetime Gifts of Equipment, Yards, and Real Estate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For decades, the standard advice to business owners with significant assets was to \u201cget it out of your estate.\u201d Give shares of the company, the equipment yard, or the rental property to your children during your lifetime, and you shrink the estate the IRS can tax at your death. When the federal estate tax exemption was $1 million or $2 million, that advice made a great deal of sense.<\/p>\n<p>That world has changed. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/how-h-r-1-reshapes-estate-planning-for-individuals-families-and-business-owners-alike.html\">\u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act\u201d<\/a> or OBBBA, permanently increased the federal estate and gift tax exemption to $15 million per person, indexed for inflation, or roughly $30 million for a married couple when both spouses\u2019 exemptions are preserved. New Jersey no longer has an estate tax, and its inheritance tax does not apply to transfers to a spouse, children, stepchildren, grandchildren, or parents. The result is that most contracting families will never owe estate tax at all.<\/p>\n<p>When estate tax is off the table, the question changes. It is no longer, \u201cHow do I get assets out of my estate?\u201d but rather, \u201cWhat will my children pay in income tax when they eventually sell what I leave them?\u201d For owners of land improvement businesses, whose balance sheets are often loaded with depreciated equipment and land bought decades ago, the answer could be hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/keep-it-or-gift-it-rethinking-lifetime-gifts-of-equipment-yards-and-real-estate.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading Keep It or Gift It? Rethinking Lifetime Gifts of Equipment, Yards, and Real Estate\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For decades, the standard advice to business owners with significant assets was to \u201cget it out of your estate.\u201d Give shares of the company, the equipment yard, or the rental property to your children during your lifetime, and you shrink the estate the IRS can tax at your death. When the federal estate tax exemption [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[243,245,320,65,343],"tags":[],"coauthors":[322],"class_list":["post-5975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction-insights","category-corporate-ma-insights","category-candido","category-insights","category-wills-trusts-estates-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Keep It or Gift It? Rethinking Lifetime Gifts of Equipment, Yards, and Real Estate &#8212; October 16, 2026 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For decades, the standard advice to business owners with significant assets was to \u201cget it out of your estate.\u201d Give shares of the company, the equipment\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/keep-it-or-gift-it-rethinking-lifetime-gifts-of-equipment-yards-and-real-estate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keep It or Gift It? Rethinking Lifetime Gifts of Equipment, Yards, and Real Estate &#8212; October 16, 2026 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For decades, the standard advice to business owners with significant assets was to \u201cget it out of your estate.\u201d Give shares of the company, the equipment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/keep-it-or-gift-it-rethinking-lifetime-gifts-of-equipment-yards-and-real-estate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-10-16T16:10:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Candido Petite\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Candido Petite\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Keep It or Gift It? Rethinking Lifetime Gifts of Equipment, Yards, and Real Estate &#8212; October 16, 2026 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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