What is that coupon (unified credit) the IRS provides?

Tender Leaf Tea Coupon from Flickr User AVI

Tender Leaf Tea Coupon from Flickr User AVI

Do you know what the Internal Revenue Service and your local grocery store have in common?

They both provide you with coupons you can apply to reduce the amount you required to pay!

Well, the IRS’s “coupon” is not exactly like scoring big with a $2.00 off coupon for Tide Detergent.  The IRS administers the unified credit.

The unified credit is automatically provided by the IRS Code to every US citizen at their birth. This credit is the amount of property that a person can gift away, either during life or at death, before they owe any tax to the IRS.

The coupon analogy is helpful because when a person passes, the person’s heirs can apply the IRS Unified Credit against against tax that might be owed by the deceased person.

For more specifics about the IRS unified credit, check this post, How does the IRS Unified Credit work?

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."