Estate Tax Planning in Thousand Oaks

Estate Tax Planning in Thousand Oaks

California has no estate tax. That is the good news. The federal estate tax is real, but as of 2026 it applies to far fewer families than people assume. The federal exemption is now $15,000,000 per person and $30,000,000 per married couple, permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Most Thousand Oaks households are not exposed. The families who are: business owners whose company keeps appreciating in value, single decedents who only get one exemption instead of two, couples where one spouse is not a U.S. citizen and cannot use the unlimited marital deduction, and anyone holding real property outside California in a state that still taxes estates.

I am an estate planning attorney serving Thousand Oaks and all of Ventura County. I do this work over Zoom or by phone and sign documents in person. I will tell you whether you actually have a federal estate tax problem right now, and whether your situation is one of the ones that still needs planning around it. I will not run up a planning bill on a problem that does not exist for you. For the full picture, start with estate planning in Thousand Oaks.

Who actually has an exposure problem today

The federal exemption is $15,000,000 per person as of 2026, permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which means a married couple can pass $30,000,000 before federal estate tax applies. Under IRC §2010(c), that exemption amount is what actually shields your estate from tax, and it is portable between spouses if the paperwork is filed correctly at the first death. At that level, very few Thousand Oaks families have a current tax problem. Where it gets more complicated: Amgen executives with significant equity compensation and vested stock, business owners with a company worth several million that keeps appreciating, and families who have been accumulating real estate for decades. Add a $1 million home, a $2 million retirement account, a $500,000 business interest, and $2 million in life insurance, and you are at $5.5 million, comfortably under the threshold for a married couple. A single person with those same assets plus a growing business, or a family with property outside California in a state that still taxes estates, gets there faster.

The tools that actually work

Irrevocable trusts remove assets from your taxable estate while allowing them to benefit your family. A spousal lifetime access trust lets your spouse benefit from assets while removing them from both of your estates over time, and for a married couple it works alongside the unlimited marital deduction under IRC §2056, which lets you defer all estate tax at the first spouse’s death regardless of the amount involved. A grantor retained annuity trust works well when you have an asset expected to appreciate significantly. Annual gifting programs let you move money out of your estate over time without gift tax if you stay within annual exclusion limits. These strategies are not secret or aggressive. They are the standard toolkit, and the earlier you start, the more flexibility you have.

Basis step-up and why some families should not over-plan

IRC §1014 gives most inherited assets a stepped-up basis to fair market value at death, which means your heirs can sell inherited stock or real estate and pay little or no capital gains tax on the appreciation that happened during your lifetime. This is a huge benefit that a family well under the $15,000,000 exemption should not undermine by moving assets into irrevocable structures that sacrifice the step-up to chase an estate tax savings they do not need. I see this mistake regularly: someone locks assets into a trust that removes the step-up benefit to solve a tax problem they never actually had. Knowing whether you are actually exposed changes which tools make sense.

Equity compensation and why Thousand Oaks professionals need a different valuation approach

Restricted stock units, stock options, and deferred compensation are common at Amgen and at other Conejo Valley employers, and they complicate estate tax planning in ways a simple house-and-brokerage estate does not have to deal with. Unvested equity generally is not part of your taxable estate yet, but it often becomes fully taxable income to your heirs the moment it vests after your death, with no stepped-up basis benefit the way appreciated stock gets. Planning for a concentrated equity position sometimes means structuring lifetime gifts or trusts around shares that have already vested, while leaving unvested grants alone since there is often little to plan around until they vest. I look at the full compensation picture, not just the house and the brokerage account, before recommending a structure.

When to plan even if you are not there yet

The best time to implement estate tax strategies is when you do not need them urgently, because that is when you have the most options. Irrevocable trusts are funded when asset values are low or when you have the cash flow to make the transfers. GRATs are locked in at interest rates that change monthly. If you wait until you are clearly over the threshold, you may have missed the most efficient window. For Conejo Valley executives and professionals, high-net-worth estate planning and asset protection fold naturally into this conversation.

Questions Thousand Oaks clients ask

Does California tax estates? No. California eliminated its estate tax years ago. Only the federal tax applies, and only above the federal exemption amount, which is $15,000,000 per person as of 2026 and permanent under current law per IRC §2010(c).

The exemption is now permanent. Does earlier planning still make sense? Yes. Irrevocable trusts funded under prior law are not undone by the exemption becoming permanent. If your estate is comfortably under $15,000,000 per person, some of those structures may no longer be necessary, and it is worth a review to see what still fits. But asset protection, income tax efficiency, and control over how assets pass to the next generation are reasons those structures still make sense even without an exemption problem.

Is life insurance counted in my estate? Yes, if you own the policy. A properly structured irrevocable life insurance trust removes the death benefit from your taxable estate entirely. Many people do not realize their policy is adding to their estate tax exposure.

Will an irrevocable trust cost my kids the stepped-up basis? It depends on the trust. Some irrevocable trusts are designed to keep assets includible enough in your estate to preserve the step-up under IRC §1014, and some are not. This is exactly the kind of detail that gets missed in cookie-cutter planning, and it is worth reviewing before you sign anything irrevocable.

Talk to Eric or call 805-244-5291. I serve Thousand Oaks and all of Ventura County.

For families transferring a home between generations, the Proposition 19 reassessment calculator can estimate the property-tax impact of a parent-child or grandparent-grandchild transfer.