What are my options on the payout amount?
There are two basic types of charitable remainder trusts: the charitable remainder unitrust (“unitrust”) and the charitable remainder annuity trust (“annuity trust”). The annuity trust must pay you, at least annually, a fixed dollar amount equal to at least 5% of the original fair market value of the assets you contributed to the CRT. The annuity trust payments remains the same despite the CRT’s asset values going up or down in the future. For example, if you were to put $300,000 in an 8 percent annuity trust, it would pay you a fixed $24,000 per year (before taxes). The more popular of the two types is the unitrust. It instead pays you a fixed percentage, at least 5%, of the fair market value of the trust assets. That value is in turn recomputed each year. Therefore, although the annual payout percentage remains fixed, the actual payout per year varies with the trust ’s total asset value. the unitrust is more popular because the payment rises with any inflation in the value of the uni
