The Ghosts Of Tax Laws Past: Five Rules That Refuse To Stay Dead

In horror movies, you can never be quite sure the monster is really dead. Just when you think it’s safe to come out of hiding, there’s a rustle in the bushes, a creaking floorboard, or a hand reaching out from the grave.

Tax laws can be a little like that, too.

Congress has a long history of passing temporary tax provisions, extending them, letting them expire, and occasionally bringing them back. Sometimes the rules return under a different name or with a slightly different purpose. Other times, provisions stick around for decades after the circumstances that inspired them have disappeared.

And just when taxpayers and tax professionals have adjusted to the new rules, Congress changes them again.

In honor of Halloween, here are five tax provisions with particularly interesting afterlives.

1. The Zombie: The Federal Estate Tax

The federal estate tax has been controversial from the beginning. Its modern incarnation was enacted as part of the Revenue Act of 1916 to raise revenue and tax accumulated wealth. But its strangest chapter came nearly a century later, when Congress actually managed to kill it. Temporarily, anyway.

Under a 2001 tax law, the federal estate tax was gradually reduced until it disappeared entirely for people dying in 2010. The law also included a sunset provision, meaning that the estate tax was scheduled to return in 2011 unless Congress acted.

Congress did act. In December 2010, Congress passed legislation retroactively reinstating the estate tax for that year, while allowing executors of estates of people who died in 2010 to elect the alternative rules that applied during the repeal. Those alternatives came with different rules for the income tax basis of inherited property. That meant that, for deaths in 2010, executors could choose between two federal tax regimes.

The estate tax survived, of course. Congress has since changed the rates, exemptions, and other rules, but the tax remains very much alive. For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15 million per person (or $30 million per married couple), with a top tax rate of 40%.

2. The Shape-Shifter: The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) has been around in various forms for decades, based on the idea that taxpayers with substantial income shouldn’t be able to use tax preferences to eliminate their tax liability.

But the corporate version appeared to meet its maker in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) repealed the corporate AMT for tax years beginning after December 31, 2017.

But it didn’t stay dead. In 2022, Congress enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, creating a new corporate AMT effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2022. The new tax imposes a 15% minimum tax based on adjusted financial statement income for certain large corporations. It generally targets corporations with average annual financial statement income exceeding $1 billion.

What we have now isn’t the same corporate AMT that Congress repealed in 2017. The structure and tax base are different. But the underlying idea survived: Some corporations should face a minimum level of federal income tax, regardless of deductions and other tax benefits.

3. The Ancient Curse: The Federal Telephone Excise Tax

In 1898, the United States imposed a federal excise tax on telephone service to help finance the Spanish-American War. At the time, telephones were still something of a luxury, and taxing certain long-distance calls was one way to raise revenue.

The war ended, and the tax eventually went away. But not permanently.

Congress brought the tax back in 1914, partly in response to revenue concerns associated with the outbreak of World War I. It disappeared and returned more than once, including during the Great Depression.

By 1990, Congress had made the tax permanent. But in 2006, following a series of federal appellate court decisions, the Treasury Department appeared to be digging the tax’s grave. Treasury stopped collecting the tax on long-distance telephone service, and taxpayers could even claim refunds for certain taxes previously collected.

But the federal tax on qualifying local telephone service remained—and it’s still on the books today. The tax is still 3% on qualifying local telephone service and teletypewriter exchange service. The statute’s survival reminds us that once Congress creates a tax, getting rid of it can be surprisingly difficult.

4. The Buried Body: Personal Exemptions

For years, taxpayers could claim personal exemptions for themselves and certain family members, reducing the amount of income subject to federal income tax.

Then came the TCJA. Beginning in 2018, the law effectively eliminated personal exemptions by reducing their amount to zero. But there was a catch: The change was temporary and scheduled to expire after 2025.

That meant personal exemptions were supposed to return from the dead in 2026. Of course, the same legislation also increased the standard deduction and changed the child tax credit, so returning to the old system would have meant more than simply restoring an exemption.

Rather than bring it back, Congress let it stay buried: In July 2025, it enacted another sweeping tax law that made the elimination of personal exemptions permanent. For 2026, the personal exemption amount remains zero.

5. The Resurrection: The Deduction For Research Expenses

Businesses engaged in research and development (R&D) have long benefited from favorable tax treatment for qualifying research costs.

For many years, federal tax law generally allowed businesses to deduct eligible research and experimental expenditures immediately rather than spreading the deductions over several years. But the 2017 tax law changed that.

Beginning in 2022, businesses were required to capitalize and amortize specified research expenditures over five years for domestic research and 15 years for foreign research. That meant businesses could no longer immediately deduct the full cost of qualifying research expenditures, even if they had already paid them. The change proved particularly controversial among businesses that invested heavily in research and software development.

Then, in 2025, Congress changed course. The new law generally restored immediate deductions for qualifying domestic research and experimental expenditures for tax years beginning after December 31, 2024, with additional transitional rules. Foreign research expenditures remain subject to capitalization and amortization.

So immediate expensing is back for domestic research, though the rules aren’t identical to those that existed before 2022.

Some Things Never Die

Congress has a habit of extending temporary tax breaks, reviving expired provisions, and making permanent rules that were originally supposed to last only a few years. Some of that stems from changing economic conditions and competing tax policy priorities. Some reflects the political and budgetary realities of getting legislation through Congress—something that feels increasingly more difficult.

But the result can be confusing for taxpayers, who may reasonably assume that a law described as temporary will eventually expire, or that a repealed provision is gone for good. As you can tell, neither assumption is worth relying on.

And while ghosts and zombies may be fictional, the tax code’s recurring provisions are very real. Happy Halloween. And remember: Just because a tax provision looks dead doesn’t mean Congress won’t bring it back.