Shortly before his death in 1992, Sam Walton described in his autobiography how his family had beaten estate taxes. In 1953, when Wal-Mart was hardly a chainlette, he put the business into a family limited partnership and gave shares (then worth very little) to his kids. "The best way to reduce paying estate taxes," he wrote, "is to give your assets away before they appreciate." And how. Today, each of Walton's children is worth $17 billion.
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