My parents are looking into helping me with a down payment on an apartment. The rule for gift tax is each parent can give you $13,000 per year without being taxes. But, if my parents wanted to give me $100,000 for a down payment on an apartment, how much would that be taxed?

If anyone can point me in the right direction, that would be great, thanks so much!

Have them loan you the money, then forgive the loan. The last I heard the limit was $10K. But if its been raised to $13K that means they can forgive $26K a year.

So, they can give me a "loan" for $100,000 this year and then every year forgive $26,000 of it until it is all gone? How do they have to report it for tax purposes?

That I'm not sure of. You may have to make some token payments. One of our tax experts can hopefully, give you more details. But I'm pretty sure that will work.

The person who receives the gift does not pay any gift tax.
A person can give any number of gifts of less than $12,000 to any number of persons. No tax is payable on these gifts.

All gifts of more than annual exclusion amount ($12000 for 2008) must be reported by the donor. There is a lifetime exclusion of $1 million. A person making a gift in excess of $12K must include the gift in the lifetime exclusion and file Form 709 to document the gift.

This exclusion will reduce your Estate Tax exclusion amount.

If the donor is married, both donor and the spouse can separately give up to $12,000 to the same person in 2008 without making a taxable gift.
Thus each parent can gift you $12,000 and then they must file form 709 to report gift of $86,000.

If your parents loan you the full 100K and at that time never expect you to pay it back, the full 100K will be treated as a gift in that year.

What IntlTax says is correct. You MUST set up a payment plan and adhere to the plan.

While making the payments, the parents can then annually forgive $26,000 towards until the loan is either paid off or totally forgiven.