Breit Law

Breit Law Because of our diverse experience, we pride ourselves on being able to provide service to big and small alike.

Practice Areas: Business Law and Planning; Tax Planning; Estate Planning; Corporate Governance; Asset Protection; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Law; Limited Liability Company Law; Personal Planning; Intellectual Property; Trusts and Estates Our clients include everyone from individuals with typical estate planning needs to local, national and international companies. Entrepreneurs, executives and retirees all find comfort and assistance within our offices.

12/06/2024

For those of you who have not filed your beneficial ownership information for your company with FINCEN you are at least temporarily off the hook. A couple of days ago, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas granted a nationwide preliminary injunction that enjoins the federal government from enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act. The judge found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, so he issued a nationwide injunction. So, the law cannot be enforced, and reporting companies need not comply with the January 1, 2025, deadline for filing beneficial ownership reports.

12/22/2021

Happy holidays and an early, happy New Year. Congress has gone back and forth with income tax changes regarding both businesses and individuals as well as changes to the estate and gift tax laws. Nothing is set in stone yet as to any changes, but a couple of things will change for our benefit in 2022 under the present laws. First, the gift tax annual exclusion which was $15,000 per year per person will increase to $16,000 in 2022. That means that each person can give up to $16,000 per year to as many people as they want without that impacting their lifetime exemption. That is a very simple and very effective yet often overlooked estate planning tool. The unified estate and gift tax exemption will increase from $11,700,000 per person in 2021 to $12,060,000 per person in 2022. That means that a married couple should not be subject to estate tax with minimal planning unless there joint estate exceeds over $24 million.

05/11/2021

So far, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about reducing estate tax credits or increasing the estate tax brackets, but the American Families Plan which provides for many new programs proposes elimination of the rule of step-up in basis at death. What that means is that under present law, if Dad bought Stock A in 1975 for $5 per share and it is worth $100 per share today, if he sold it himself, he would have long term capital gain of $95 per share, but if he held it until death, his beneficiaries would be treated as if they paid $100 per share for it. The $95 of gain would disappear. There are some exceptions like small family businesses and farms.

What does this mean to you and your family? Obviously, it increases income taxes, but let’s try to look at the bright side. If the law passes with this provision, it will remove the incentive to hold an asset which is no longer productive for no reason other than to avoid capital gains tax. Let’s face it. Some people are motivated disproportionately by tax considerations. In some cases, it might actually be a benefit to the family if an old, tired asset is sold and the net proceeds are then reinvested into a more productive asset.

02/25/2021

Just a quick reminder for anyone who bought a home in Florida in 2020, uses it as their primary residence, and was the record title holder on January 1, 2021, if you haven't registered for Homestead already, you only have until March 1.

12/03/2020

This falls under the category of “every little bit helps.” This is the time of the year when many people give at least a little bit of thought to year-end tax planning. Hopefully, they also give some thought to charitable contributions. In past years, charitable contributions could only be taken if you itemized your deductions. Now that most people don’t itemize their deductions given the larger standard deduction, they may think twice about making a charitable contribution if it isn’t deductible. Well, at least for this year, you can deduct contributions made to a qualified charity in cash up to $300 “above the line.” In other words, you can deduct that amount even if you don’t itemize. If you itemize, you can take a larger percentage of contributions than in past years. There are also increased benefits for contributing appreciated publicly traded securities that you have held for more than 12 months. If you are thinking about that, talk to your tax professional before selling the stock and contributing the proceeds. You will be glad you did.

06/04/2020

Yesterday, the Senate passed the House version of revisions for the Paycheck Protection Program. The Bill is being sent to the President for his signature which is expected. Here are some high points:
1. Borrowers can extend the eight-week period to 24 weeks or keep the original eight-week period.
2. The amount required to be used for payroll drops to 60% from 75%, however, if you don’t reach the 60% level, none of the loan will be forgiven.
3. The deadline to restore workforce levels has been extended from June 30 to December 31.
4. If you don’t restore your workforce because you cannot find qualified employees or were unable to restore business operations to Feb. 15, 2020 levels due to COVID-19 related operating restrictions, your loan may still be forgiven.
5. The time to repay the loan has been increased from two to five years.
6. Borrowers can now defer the employer’s share of F**A payroll taxes for two years with half due in 2021 and the rest due in 2022.

05/13/2020

Finally, some good news from the SBA. Small businesses with PPP loans have been sweating out a determination of what “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant” meant on the loan application. Did it mean you had no other options? Were you committing fraud if you had some money in the bank? No one knew, but many borrowers were concerned. Initially, the SBA said that if you returned the money by last week, you would be deemed to have made a good faith certification. Now, in their questions and answers as of May 13, the SBA states that in consultation with the Department of the Treasury, they have determined that “any borrower that, together with its affiliates, received PPP loans with an original principal amount of less than $2 million will be deemed to have made the required certification concerning the necessity of the loan request in good faith.” This determination was made because borrowers with loans below the $2 million amount are assumed to be less likely to have access to adequate sources of liquidity than borrowers that obtained larger loans. Plus, they state that “this approach will enable SBA to conserve its finite audit resources and focus its reviews on larger loans, where the compliance effort may yield higher returns.” Bear in mind that this just gets a small business over the first hurdle. In order to obtain loan forgiveness, you will still need to use the money for payroll and the other permissible uses.

04/17/2020

My son is a partner at a local, boutique law firm that specializes in the representation of individuals and businesses against insurance companies in a variety of ways. With the Coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have been forced to shut down or have suffered economic losses. This has led to an uptick in calls from concerned business owners as to whether or not they have insurance coverage for their lost income. He and his partner are reviewing insurance policies for businesses of all kinds and assisting with the submission of their claims free of charge.

I own a business – do I qualify? Business Interruption Insurance is usually included, if at all, under a business owners' policy or commercial property policy. To qualify, you must have selected this form of coverage and your policy must be active at the time of the loss.

I have Business Interruption Insurance – Is the Coronavirus a covered loss under my policy? Business Interruption Insurance typically covers your business for lost revenue and other expenses if a fire, storm or other covered physical loss/damage causes you to temporarily close your business. Whether or not the situation caused by the Coronavirus is covered is dictated by the specific language of your policy. The terms of many policies have left their insurance carriers vulnerable to cover unanticipated claims or to defend themselves in civil litigation.

If you’d like assistance or have additional questions, feel free to contact my son, Adam Breit, at (954) 673-3157 or simply email your policy for review to [email protected].

03/16/2020

We are living through crazy times. This is more than the stock market plunging and cruise ships remaining in dock. People living paycheck to paycheck are worried about when their employer might shut down. Most small businesses are either experiencing an eerie quiet or anticipating that the phones will stop ringing or the customers will stop walking in. Some have shut down altogether. Now is the time for all of us to work together toward the common goal of making sure that everyone is safe and that no one goes hungry.

We also need to take care of our own business. Fortunately, technology allows us to do that from the comfort and safety of our own homes. Email not only goes to office computers, but the phones as well. Office phones can be forwarded to our cells. Face time and Skype can temporarily substitute for in person meetings. If you have questions and need help, we will still be here to work through your problems with you. Over the next few weeks, much of our lives will grind to a halt. Let’s take advantage of that and use that extra time in a productive way. We all too often are too busy to follow through with the details of things which are easy to ignore. Let’s finish our estate planning. Let’s finally get around to writing up that shareholders agreement or operating agreement. If nothing else, we should learn from this experience that we need to be prepared for anything. Let’s take this time to prepare.

02/18/2020

People ask me this question all the time. “Richard, I am extremely wealthy and want to give away millions of dollars. Is that a good idea?” My answer is “sure, Grandpa, why would you even ask me such a question?” Dream ends, return to reality. In the real world, there might actually be a good tax reason for doing this. The federal gift and estate tax exclusion amount for 2020 is $11.58 million. That’s the good news. It’s up from the $5 million exclusion in pre-2017 tax law change. The bad news is that some people think that what Congress giveth it will taketh away if it allows the law to expire on December 31, 2025. While you can look at history and see that Congress has never reduced benefits under the federal gift and estate tax laws, there is a first time for everything. What happens if Congress allows the exclusion amount law to go back to pre-2017 levels and you gave away more than $5 million based on the law today? Well, the IRS took care of this problem in favor of the taxpayer. If you take advantage of the higher exclusion applicable between 2018 and 2025 by making gifts of over $5 million, you won’t lose the tax benefit of the higher exclusion amount if you die on or after January 1, 2026 and the exclusion amount is reduced back to $5 million. The regulations create a special rule allowing you to benefit from the greater of the exclusion amount applicable to gifts made during your lifetime or the exclusion applicable on the date of death. But, there is a limitation. It only applies to people who made gifts exceeding the lower exclusion amount of sleep during that period between 2018 and the end of 2025. It doesn’t give you a higher estate tax benefit for money left in your estate at your death.

10/08/2019

Do you know what next week is? I’ll give you a hint. There are no Hallmark cards for it. Give up? It's National Estate Planning Awareness Week which was actually created by House Resolution 1499 in 2008.

Statistics show that over 57% of adults in the US have not prepared a will or trust even though 3 out of 4 questioned thought it was important. Just as troubling is that most people have insurance policies, IRA’s, annuities or other assets with out of date beneficiary designations or incorrect ownership designations. Why? Because no one wants to do this so they put it off long enough to forget about doing it.

True stories. Second wife answered the door to her home only to find the first wife standing there with a suitcase. “I still own half of this house. Which bedroom do you want me to use?” Or, one of my former partners who finally got around to some estate planning when he was expecting a child with his second wife. I suggested he check into his beneficiary designations and he discovered that his first wife was the beneficiary of his 401K and his life insurance – in other words, most of what he had.

Give it some thought. You have the whole week.

05/15/2019

This is the latest in my series of heart stopping, action-packed estate planning memos. I’ll try to make this short enough to keep your attention. The bottom line is that years ago the estate tax laws affected a pretty significant portion of the population. Even someone without a second home on the beach needed to do some form of estate tax planning. Now with exemptions of over $22 million for a couple, a much smaller percentage of the population needs to worry about planning their estate around estate tax matters. However, that doesn’t mean that you should avoid planning altogether. The playing field has just changed. People who used to rely on a bypass trust to minimize estate tax can now use their spouse’s unused estate tax exclusion as well as their own as long as they file and estate tax return upon the death of the first spouse. Old wills and trusts that were written before the law changed need to be addressed. Otherwise, your documents which were well written years ago to accomplish your estate tax planning under the laws of that time can have a very negative income tax impact. If you have questions about this, please let me know.

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