Taxation of IRA's on death of owner

[flynndt]

What is the name of your state?
I'm in NY and I'm doing some estate planning and I'm not sure how my IRA's and 401k's will be treated on my death. If I can manage to only take the mininum distributions, will the balance be subject to both estate taxes (assuming over federal exemption) and income tax to the recipient? I'm concerned that this will consume most of the IRA. If this is so, would it be better to get this money out of the IRA's into a taxable account. Does it depend solely on the tax rate of recipient and myself? Thanks for any help.

Deb

 

[anteater]

The genreal answer is "Yes." The details depend a lot on specifics.

if you want to read up on this, I would suggest Ed Slott's book, "The Retirement Savings Timebomb."