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Charitable Lead Trusts

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Make a substantial gift to Commonwealth School in the form of fixed annual payments and pass assets to your family or other heirs at reduced tax cost.

A charitable lead annuity trust may be right for you if:

You have substantial assets that you do not need for your own financial security
You would like to provide for your family or other heirs
You would like to save gift taxes, estate taxes, and probate costs
You want your gift to make a difference at Commonwealth School starting immediately
You could consider a gift of $[clt_minimum] or more to benefit Commonwealth and your heirs

Your Benefits

Transfer assets to your family or other heirs
Save taxes
Gain the satisfaction of providing annual support to Commonwealth

How Your Gift Helps

Your planned gift helps make the Commonwealth experience possible—today and far into the future. Among many things, your support will help us:

Serve curious students who want to understand their world deeply—and work to improve it

Provide rigorous classes taught by caring faculty that challenge students to do their best work

Increase access to a Commonwealth education for students from communities too often ignored

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Separate Trust

A charitable lead annuity trust is a separate taxable trust governed by an irrevocable trust agreement. You choose the trustee who is responsible for administering your lead trust and guiding the investment of its assets.

Make fixed payments to Commonwealth School each year

Your lead annuity trust makes payments to Commonwealth each year of a fixed amount for the duration of its term. Your lead trust can make payments to more than one charity, if you wish.

You choose the payment amount

You choose the amount that your lead annuity trust must distribute each year. A payout equal to 5% to 7% of the trust's initial value is typical. Payments are usually made in annual installments, but semiannual, quarterly, or monthly installments are possible.

Remaining assets to heirs

When your charitable lead annuity trust ends, all remaining principal in the trust will be transferred to family members or other heirs you choose.

Term flexibility

While most annuity trusts last for 10-20 years, other terms are possible. A lead annuity trust can last for one or more lives, for a specific length of time, or for a combination of lives and years. The term length you choose will depend on when you want your heirs to receive their trust distribution, as well as other factors.

Tax benefits

Reduce or eliminate gift tax on gift to heirs

Avoid all gift and estate tax on asset growth

When you transfer assets to your lead annuity trust, you make a taxable gift to the individuals who will receive your trust's principal when it ends. However, your gift of payments to Commonwealth School earns you a charitable deduction in the year of your gift that will reduce, and in some cases eliminate, your taxable gift.

Some lead annuity trust donors make a point of picking a term length and payout rate that reduces their taxable gift to zero. Doing so eliminates any possibility that they will have to pay gift tax on their gift.

In addition, the assets in your lead annuity trust are removed from your taxable estate. This means that any growth in the value of your trust's assets during its term can be passed on to your heirs completely free of gift and estate taxes.

Taxation of the trust

A lead annuity trust is a taxable trust. However, a lead trust pays income tax only if its income exceeds the amount it pays to Commonwealth School during the year. A careful trustee can balance your lead annuity trust's income against its charitable payments in order to minimize income taxes.

Lead annuity trusts for grandchildren

Lead annuity trusts for the benefit of grandchildren present special tax planning challenges related to a tax called the generation skipping tax. For example, you may want to consider creating a charitable lead unitrust in this situation, as it is easier to plan for generation skipping tax issues when creating a lead unitrust than when creating a lead annuity trust. Please be sure to talk to your advisors or to us about these tax considerations.

Suitable funding assets

You can fund your lead annuity trust with many different kinds of assets. All of the following assets can work well:

Cash
Securities
A closely-held business
Commercial property
A combination of these assets

Assets that are likely to increase substantially in value over time can be especially attractive candidates for transfer into a lead trust. You will want to work closely with your advisors to pick an asset or combination of assets that will best achieve your goals for your gift.

Example

[clt_ex_fullname] spent his career building a successful manufacturing business, which he sold a few years ago for $[clt_ex_price]. He and his wife, [clt_ex_wifename] , have three children who are in their 30s. [clt_ex_name] has been reviewing his estate plan with an eye toward adding a major gift to Commonwealth School to his plan.

Funding a charitable lead annuity trust offers an excellent way for [clt_ex_name] to provide generous support to Commonwealth and pass assets to his three children. [clt_ex_name] chooses to create a $[clt_ex_trust] trust that will pay $[clt_ex_payout] to Commonwealth each year for [clt_ex_years] years.

Benefits

The [clt_ex_lastname]'s three children will split approximately $[clt_ex_kids_payout]* when the trust ends.
The [clt_ex_lastname] will earn a gift tax charitable deduction of over $[clt_ex_tax_dct]**.
The assets used to fund the trust will not be taxable in their estate.
The trust will distribute $[clt_ex_trust_dist] to Commonwealth over [clt_ex_years] years.

*	Assumes the trust assets earn a [clt_ex_trt_return] % annual net return.
**	The Feaster's charitable deduction may vary depending on the timing of their gift.

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