The notice reported that the estate would be receiving a refund check in the amount of $557,519.13, consisting of the New York State estate tax refund of $529,342.86 plus interest of $28,176.27.
“Naturally, this was great news for Sara Jane Hogan,” Biondi said.
Hogan is the married daughter of Jules Seiden, a New York architect who died in 2010 at age 94, and his wife Evelyn, the couple’s surviving QTIP beneficiary, who died in 2014 at age 89.
Hogan is executrix of her late mother’s estate.
In 2014, New York State’s Department of Taxation and Finance made a determination of tax deficiency in the estate of Evelyn Seiden, whose husband made her a wealthy woman through the marital trust known as a QTIP.
A QTIP trust qualifies for the marital deduction in the estate of the first spouse to die.
According to court documents, based on the repeal of the federal estate tax for the year 2010, the estate of Jules Seiden was not required to file a federal estate tax return—and it did not.
The estate's New York tax return designated the trust as a QTIP and took a marital deduction for the trust property. The state issued a closing letter in 2012, accepting the estate's tax return.
In preparing the New York state tax return for Evelyn Seiden’s estate, former counsel Sabino Biondi said he excluded the value of the marital trust property based on New York law.
New York law defines gross estate by referencing the federal gross estate. Since the estate of Jules Seiden’s state tax return reported the QTIP trust in 2010, but did not file a federal estate tax return, Biondi said he prepared the New York tax return for the estate of Evelyn Seiden in 2014 by reporting the trust, but excluding its value from the taxable gross estate.