Donating land question

When giving land to a family member I believe you use form 709 for tax purposes.

Donating is the completely wrong term to use here, you should change the thread title to get better responses.

You donate land to charity, you 'gift' it to someone like a family member.

To answer your question, land is assessed and the value counts towards your lifetime maximum of $5.5 mil per person tax free. So a couple can gift $11 mil worth of land and assetts tax free.

Is the estate in question worth more than that? If not, that's all you need to know and you are good to go.

If it is worth more, the big key is moving it out of the current owner's estate asap. You do this by moving it into a trust with the trustee being the current owner and then at their death it passes on. The reason you do that asap, is because you use the current worth of the estate even though they may not die for 20 or whatever years. So you use today's $5.5 or $11 mil and not the assessed value in 20 years when it's worth 4x as much. That's the gist, but if they are worth more than $11 mil they should be in talks with an estate attorney.

What about the annual limit ($14,000) on gifts?

If the real estate is valuable, say a few hundred thousand dollars, would you have to spread out the gifting of it to avoid exceeding the annual limit and incurring gift tax? I see articles out there with strategies for doing that.

Found this video and it was the best explanation ive found