in 2017 My elderly aunt gifted a parcel of real estate appraised at $203,500 to a Trust set up for her great niece...no corpus or income can be distributed to anyone other than the beneficiary and the trust assets will become part of the beneficiary's estate should she die before trust termination.... we are trying to complete a 2017 form 709 thinking it should be a simple process, but it is a little daunting. ISSUES: (1) We have not been able to determine what my aunt's basis in the property is since it was deeded from her own dad in 1964 and records are scarce. we are considering just using an estimate of what we feel land prices in the area were in 1964... (2) My aunt was married twice but both husbands died over 10 years ago...(she had no children of her own) ........ And here are my basic questions: (1) even tho a trust is involved, can I ignore skips and just still use only Schedule A Part 1 since the single beneficiary is only one to ever receive any trust benefits? (2) For the applicable credit exclusion amount, do I use $ 5,490,000 or $ 2,141,800...? Addt'l Note: my aunt's estate will be only a few hundred thousand dollars at the most at her eventual death. (3) is there any problem using our own estimate of 1964 land prices to determine her basis..?? Since we know there will never be an estate tax problem, we realize this form 709 is merely paper shuffling cause she'll never owe any estate or gift taxes etc ... but we realize the form still must be filed....but maybe total accuracy is not a big deal..???
