But, as elsewhere, it is actually a welfare program in which potential beneficiaries, as a class, pay only a small fraction of cost and are subsidized by non-potential beneficiaries.

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In addition, for your owned accounts (non-inherited) your beneficiaries of those accounts can stretch payments over their lifetimes as well.

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That means that trust beneficiaries can take distributions from special non-exempt GST trusts with no tax bite (chalk one up for the trust babies).

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