That point was not lost on Gary Erickson of Clif Bar. In his book, he went out of his way to remind readers that estate taxes alone can force a business to be sold. If you’re the sole owner of a debt-free company worth, say, $30 million, it will go into a trust upon your death, and your estate may owe as much as $15 million in taxes on that single asset. Unless other arrangements have been made, there’s only one way the estate will be able to come up with that money: by selling the business. There’s also only one way to avoid such a fate: by planning well in advance what will happen to the
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