MASSACHUSETTS TRUSTS AND SUCCESSION TAXES

Authors

Maxwell E. Fead, Of the Bar of Detroit, Michigan
Milton D. Green, Of the Bar of Denver, Colorado

Abstract

Ordinarily, one thinks of trust estates as connected with testamentary dispositions of property, marriage settlements, spendthrift trusts, or other similar "pure" trusts. However, in comparatively recent years, trust estates have assumed a place in active business life, occupying the same general fields of activity as the corporation. Business men early found that the advantages of corporate existence were offset, to a greater or less degree, by corresponding disadvantages, such as compliance with regulations laid down by the state, inflexibility of charter provisions, and particularly increased burdens of taxation. The corporate organization lays itself open to the touch of the state revenue department in numerous places. A license tax for the privilege of becoming a corporation may be exacted; an annual excise tax may be collected; the corporation, being a legal person, must pay a property tax on all its possessions, including corporate excess; the same person may be required to pay an income tax, both to the state and federal governments; a stock transfer tax may be imposed, and finally the shareholder may be required to pay a property tax on the value of the shares which he holds, and an income tax from the profits derived from them.

Recommended Citation

Maxwell E. Fead & Milton D. Green, MASSACHUSETTS TRUSTS AND SUCCESSION TAXES, 27 Mich. L. Rev. 869 (1929).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol27/iss8/3