“There were 102,608 gifts given in 2008 against which valuation discounts were taken,” reports IRS economist Melissa J. Belvedere in the recent IRS publication 2008 Gifts, “and the dollar value of these discounts totaled $3.7 billion.” The majority of discounts exceeded 40% of the reported fair market value of the gifts, Belvedere adds. “Approximately 43.6% of discounted assets were stock, while real estate made up 21.1% of discounted assets.” Remember, the statistics are for 2008 gifts, and the IRS’s posture towards these discounts for gifts in 2009 and later might be different given the current U.S. deficit woes.