The most expensive sentence a business owner can say to an estate planner is "we signed the letter of intent last month." Most of the planning that reduces estate tax, defers income tax and protects the proceeds has to happen before a sale process creates a hard valuation and before any binding agreement exists. The sale is the deadline. Planning creates the options.
Start with the entity type, basis and timing. Then choose two or three tools from a short list: moving minority or nonvoting equity to a South Dakota trust before the value is fixed, a sale to a grantor trust to freeze the estate, GRATs for volatile equity, a charitable remainder trust or grantor lead trust for the sale year, insurance for liquidity and buy-sell funding, qualified small business stock planning where the facts support it, and a community property trust or nongrantor trusts for basis and state tax.
The full piece is at turnipseed.law.
