2025 Schedule

When a business owner dies, their once 40% silent partner—the US Treasury department—demands a cash payment within 9 months.  That obligation can create problems for surviving family members with any business, but when that business is publicly traded, those problems are compounded and can include dealing with a quick drop in share price due to the death, navigating restrictive SEC rules on stock ownership and sales, and modeling a plan to produce the necessary liquidity.
 
Section 6166 is often thought of as an estate tax deferral tool only available to private company owners. However, this deferral election is potentially available for an increasing number of publicly-traded companies—in particular, those with dual-class “super voting” share structures.  As counsel for families across the country, David Scott Sloan and Patrick J. Duffey have worked through the thorny issues faced when working with clients who have concentrated holdings with a public company, including pre-death planning and modeling, statutory qualification at death, filing the election, as well as estate operations during the 14-year payment period. 
 
This presentation covers the basics of 6166, the practical and legal (tax & non-tax) challenges and considerations of applying the statute to a public company at each of those phases, and the insights David and Patrick have developed over the years—including audits on these estates.   Practitioners will leave the presentation better equipped to understand the special issues implicated when making a 6166 election for a publicly-traded company and to advise their clients about engaging in related planning during their lifetimes.