When Congress first introduced the wacky legislation that is the current federal estate tax situation (an exemption that gradually rises to $3.5 million per person, is eliminated in the year 2010 and returns in 2011 to its “old self”) most folks assumed we had plenty of time to fix it. 2010 seemed years away. Now,…
As Congress continues to ponder whether the federal estate tax makes any sense, the Citizens for Tax Justice weighs in with some IRS statistics. Consider this: In 2004, there were 2,429,024 Americans who died. Only 18,431 of those Americans were required to pay federal estate tax in 2005. If you’re keeping score, that’s .8% –…
Nobody wants a partisan tax blogger. It’s so… impolitic, if you will. So, I’m not going to offer any real commentary about the election on yesterday in terms of winners and losers. You can do your own Wednesday morning quarterbacking. That said, the face of the House has changed drastically with the loss of 27…
Okay, who other than Senator Frist will admit that they thought the newly packaged estate tax reduction/minimum wage increase bill was going anywhere? Every practitioner that I spoke with saw the tacking on of the estate tax reduction to the minimum wage increase as both a death knell for the bill and politicking. Nothing more….
Earlier this year, Congress again failed to repeal the federal estate tax. As many practitioners anticipated (including this blogger), Congress went back to the drawing board to produce a bill which modifies, rather than repeals, the existing tax. The proposed bill would: Reunify the estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes. Increase the estate and…
From the Washington Post, an article that suggested that a repeal would hurt the “small rich”…
The Senate failed to garner enough votes to repeal the federal estate tax (again). For more from NPR, click here.
To make you consider even more tax cuts. Now that Congress has pushed through a $70 million tax bill, some Congressional officials are hoping to reintroduce discussion about a permanent federal estate tax repeal. You can read more here.
Despite his prior assurances to bring the estate tax repeal to a vote before the end of last summer, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced in remarks for the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would both bring a proposal to reduce or repeal the federal estate tax to a vote in May, and schedule…