Is money added to a joint account considered a gift?
Q. I am a salaried person and my mother is a homemaker. I have a personal account and a joint account with my mother, and she is the primary owner.  Curious  A. Adding money to a joint account is not a gift. It is only when the joint account holder takes the funds out of the account that a gift is made, and in this case, only to the extent the funds are not returned to the joint account, said Catherine Romania, an estate planning attorney with Witman Stadtmauer in Florham Park. In the interim, you may consider the funds taken out of the joint account a loan.  In any event, you are permitted to make a gift of up to $15,000 a year to anyone without any reporting requirements or tax consequences, she said, so if the net amount that is transferred between the accounts is less than $15,000, it is immaterial from a gift or tax perspective. If the gift exceeds $15,000 per year, you are required to report it on a gift tax return but until your total gifts  to everyone  during your lifetime exceeds the current estate and gift tax exemption of $11.7 million, there will be no tax, Romania said. Email your questions to Ask@NJMoneyHelp.com. Karin Price Mueller writes the Bamboozled column for NJ Advance Media and is the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Follow NJMoneyHelp on Twitter @NJMoneyHelp. Find NJMoneyHelp on Facebook. Sign up for NJMoneyHelp.coms weekly e-newsletter.