getting 100k to buy a house from my parents,how do I avoid taxes

What is the name of your state? MI

I'm purchasing a home, and my parents are giving me $100K. The house is 270K. How can I avoid paying taxes on that 100K. Should i put my parents name on the house?? should i do it as a loan??

I've also heard of some law that allows you to do this one time, where my parents could give me the house, and as long as i lived there for 2 yrs or more, i wouldn't suffer taxes/penalty. I've also read some of the exceptions to gift taxes of up to $1 million/lifetime.

Please clearify the above, and give me some different options,

Thanks in advance.

[abezon]

1. Your parents can give you any amount of money they like. If they give you more than $22,000 in any year, they must file a gift tax return. This will reduce the non-taxable portion of their estate when they die, but they pay no taxes now.

2. After you buy the house, if you sell at a profit, you can exclude up to $250,000 of gains if you lived in & owned the house for 2 of the 5 years prior to sale. This doesn't help you with the purchase, but will save you money at sale.

A possible structure: buy the house with your parents & list them as tenants in common on the deed, owning an undivided 78/270 share in the house at purchase. (That's $100,000 - $22,000 gifted to you divided by the total purchase price of the house.) Then next year, they execute a quit claim deed for another undivided 22/270 share in the house. Repeat until they have given you their entire share in the house. This will take 4 years. At the end of 4 years, you'll own the entire house with a basis of $270,000. They may want to gift you $20,000 a year so they can still buy you a holiday present or 2.

If you have a spouse, they can also gift $22,000 a year to the spouse.