PG Calc Blog

[NOTE: The following is based on a true story.] Some of the numbers just didn’t make sense. It was that most wonderful time of the year for a non-profit organization – the closing of the June 30 fiscal year! Almost like Christmas in July, everyone was busy reviewing tally sheets and running various reports in an effort to provide comprehensive information about the gifts received over the previous 12 months. With outright gifts, of course, the process was fairly straightforward – whatever was received, for the most part, was counted with a few exceptions. With life income gifts, however, the process was a little more complicated, since the organization needs to report the total funding amount, the estimated liability, and the estimate of the charitable remainder.

Our Client Services staff regularly takes client calls that go something like this: Client: I think your software is giving me the wrong deduction. PG Calc Client Services: Can you please explain what you mean? Client:  Sure.  My donor is 75 years old, so her life expectancy is 11.1 years using the 2000CM mortality table. I know the deduction calculation uses the 2000CM table but when I compute the deduction for a 5% unitrust with a fixed term of 11.1 years, I get a lower deduction than when I compute the deduction for the same unitrust that lasts for my donor’s lifetime. That doesn’t make sense! It does, actually.  Let me explain.

Annuity 2000. 2012 IAR. 1983 Basic. 2000CM. Perhaps you are familiar with one or more of these terms. They are the names of mortality tables that are important to planned giving calculations of one kind or another. With so many different mortality tables in play, it’s no wonder that gift planners get confused about which table is used for what purpose and why . . . to the extent that they think about them at all. To help dispel the confusion, I briefly describe below what a mortality table is and the specific use and characteristics of the four mortality tables that gift planners need to be most aware of.