[singron]

Your taxable estate is calculated after subtracting debts from your assets, so even if you don't want to leave any inheritance, you can borrow equal amounts to your unrealized assets and effectively spend all your money while you are alive without ever paying capital gains tax or estate tax.

If you do want to leave inheritance, capital gains basis is reset at death, which effectively forgives your lifetime unrealized capital gains, so you would only owe estate tax. If you sold before you died, you would still have to pay estate tax in addition to the capital gains tax.

[TaylorPhebillo]

That makes some sense. So buy-borrow-die with all the shares used as collateral generates no taxes, if you can find someone to lend for the full value of the shares. I wonder how high a ratio you can borrow if you're e.g. Musk or Bezos.

On the off chance anyone finds this comment, I found this page with the current modification proposals helpful as well: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11812?fbcli...