re: Gift tax limit

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How does this work for non monetary gifts. Like I “bought” a car from my parents prob worth 30K for 5K

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Part gift, part sale. But again, if your parents have some sort of obligation to support you (with age being a big factor), the IRS isn’t gonna really care about that too much. So, if your parents are divorced, and your dad sells you his old BMW that’s worth $30k for $5k, the IRS isn't going to really care about that even though it’s in excess of the $15k gift tax limit. Of course, very few people are in an estate tax position to begin with so it will never matter.

However, as someone pointed out earlier, the Dims want to lower the estate tax exemption. Right now it is scheduled to go down to $5 million (adjusted for inflation from sometime around 2010) in 2025. however there are Dime who are advocating that it go down to about $1 million in 2025, or earlier. Given that that would make much of the country (and pretty much every congressman) subject to the estate tax, it's extremely doubtful that it would ever go down that low. Remember, pretty much everything you have your hands on is subject to the estate tax, including the value of your house, the face value of any insurance policy, and the value of your pension plan. So, if it went down to $1 million, almost everyone who owns a house anywhere near New York City, L.A., or S.F. would be subject to the estate tax.