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based purely on conveyancing form without probing whether the
donees in fact received rights differing in any meaningful way
from those that would have flowed from a traditional trust
arrangement.
Petitioners’ advocated approach could also lead to
situations where gift tax consequences turned entirely upon
distinctions in the ordering of transactions, rather than in
their substance. For example, while petitioners contributed
property to an LLC and then gifted ownership units to their
children and grandchildren, a similar result could have been
achieved by first transferring ownership units and then making
contributions to the entity. Yet petitioners would apparently
have us decide that the latter scenario falls within the rubric
of established precedent while the former is independent thereof.
We decline to take such an artificial view.
We are equally unconvinced by petitioners’ attempts to avoid
the principles discussed above with the assertion that
the postponement question deals with rights to present
use, possession or enjoyment of the transferred
property, not the likelihood of the actual use,
possession, or enjoyment of the property. See, Estate
of Cristofani v. Comm’r, 97 T.C. 74 (1991); Crummey v.
Comm’r, 397 F.2d 82 (9th Cir. 1968); Kieckhefer v.
Comm’r, 189 F.2d 118 (7th Cir. 1951); Gilmore v.
Comm’r, 213 F.2d 520, 522 (6th Cir. 1954) * * *
Each of the above-cited cases involved trusts in which
beneficiaries were given an absolute right to demand
distributions and have not been interpreted to establish a rule
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