Description
A sixty-thousand-dollar exclusion and rates to forty per cent, on an account your client believes is offshore. This session maps the US federal estate tax exposure asset by asset, works through the six tax treaties that can reduce or remove it, and analyzes the structures that fix it.
Date: 4 Sep 2026
Time: 2:00 pm ET
Situs, exposure, treaty relief, and the recommended structures that survive scrutiny, for advisors whose clients hold U.S. assets but not U.S. status.
| Audience | Financial advisors, CPAs and EAs, estate attorneys, trust officers, family office staff |
| Language | English |
| Knowledge level | Intermediate to advanced |
| Field of study | Taxes |
| Prerequisites | Familiarity with the residence and domicile distinction (session A1) is helpful but not required. Advance preparation: none. |
| Format | Live web conference, group internet based — 50 minutes of instruction, 10 minutes of Q&A |
| Credit | 60 minutes; 1.0 credit hour to be requested from CFP Board, NASBA/CPE and state CLE boards |
A non-U.S. client’s U.S. brokerage account is exposed to federal estate tax above a USD 60,000 exclusion, at graduated rates reaching 40 per cent — a threshold that has not been adjusted since 1988, that does not appear in any account-opening document, and that a great many European clients and more than a few U.S. custodians do not know exists. The exposure surfaces at the worst possible moment: the custodian freezes the account, the family cannot access it, and the advisor is the person holding the relationship. This session prices the exposure, works the treaties, and evaluates the structures.
Learning objectives
- Apply the situs rules of sections 2104 and 2105 to a nonresident’s typical asset mix and quantify the resulting exposure.
- Compare the USD 60,000 nonresident exclusion with the exclusion available to a citizen or domiciliary, and calculate the pro-rata unified credit available under an estate tax treaty.
- Identify the intangibles carve-out from U.S. gift tax for non-domiciliaries and structure lifetime transfers to use it before it is lost.
- Evaluate blocker and holding structures for U.S. securities and U.S. real estate against their income tax, reporting and beneficial-ownership cost.
- Describe the Form 706-NA and transfer certificate process and its practical effect on the timing of account release.
Case studies
- A Brazilian client with a USD 6 million U.S. brokerage account and no U.S. residence: approximately USD 2.37 million of federal estate tax, no treaty, and a custodian that will not release a dollar without a transfer certificate.
- A German client comparing a personally-held Manhattan apartment against one held through a GmbH — priced against FIRPTA withholding, the branch profits tax, the treaty, and the beneficial-ownership filing.
- A Swiss client who wants to give U.S. shares to a child, and can do so today entirely free of U.S. gift tax — a window that closes the day she becomes domiciled.
Sample questions that will be answered:
- Is the USD 60,000 figure indexed for inflation?
- Does holding the account jointly help?
- Can a third-country national use a treaty because the assets are held through a treaty-country entity?
- Are Irish-domiciled ETFs a genuine solution, and what do they cost the client elsewhere?
Participant handouts:
- A situs matrix (asset type against estate tax and gift tax exposure);
- a six-country treaty comparison table;
- a one-page structuring decision tree with a cost column.
Registration page copy
A sixty-thousand-dollar exclusion and rates to forty per cent, on an account your client believes is offshore. This session maps the exposure asset by asset, works through the six treaties that can reduce or remove it, and prices the structures that fix it — including the cases in which the right advice is to do nothing at all.
