$10 billion for irrevocable inter vivos trusts in 2005

The summer issue of the IRS Statistics of Income includes an analysis of the 2005 gift tax returns. You might think that no one would make taxable gifts when there's a chance that the federal estate tax could be repealed (the chance was much better in 2005), and you'd be almost right. Just over $40 billion in gifts were reported to the IRS, with 97% being not taxable for one reason or another. Still, gift tax collections came to $1.7 billion from 7,664 federal gift tax returns (more than 260,000 gift tax returns were filed overall).

One quarter of the transfers were in trust, or about $10 billion. Most of these, $2.8 billion worth, were simple trusts that pay all their income each year to one beneficiary. Marital trusts were lumped in with personal residence trusts and generation-skipping trusts, and so are not included in that figure. Charitable split-interest trusts came in just under $1 billion.

More women filed gift tax returns than men.