Death Tax Revival Murders Yeoman Ranchers
Who needs death panels? Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) claims that ranchers and farmers in her state are planning on ending dialysis or other life-extending medical treatment before the end of...
View ArticleThe Lame-Duck Congress: So Many Tax Issues, So Little Time
As usual in December, personal finance columns are filled with end-of-year tax advice—all those things you should do before New Year’s to cut your tax bill. But 2010’s end-of-year issues are different:...
View ArticleThe Obama-GOP Tax Deal May Be Bipartisan, But It Isn’t Stimulus and It Isn’t...
A modest thought experiment: Here is a check for $858 billion. Your job is to boost short-term economic growth. What would you do with the money? President Obama and a huge bipartisan majority of the...
View ArticleJohnny Depp and the New Tax Law
When the President signs the big tax deal later today, will he be cutting income taxes for most families or sparing them a tax hike? Will he be slashing the estate tax or resurrecting it? Those...
View ArticleHow Michele Bachmann Would Knock 20,000 Millionaires off the Tax Rolls
In a revealing interview with Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal, Representative Michele Bachmann(R-MN) called for repealing taxes on capital gains. She also said she strongly believes that...
View ArticleThe Coming Flood of Estate Tax Returns
Fewer than 3,300 estates will owe federal estate tax this year, the smallest number in more than 75 years (other than 2010 when the tax disappeared for the year). But, paradoxically, even as Congress...
View ArticleWill States Tumble Over the Fiscal Cliff Too?
As Congress and President Obama continue to spar over how to avoid the looming fiscal cliff, most public attention has been focused on what tumbling over the edge would mean for the federal budget and...
View ArticleGive Now or Pay Later: The Ever-Changing Estate and Gift Tax
For over a decade, the federal estate and gift tax has been in constant flux with its exemption rising, its rates falling, and its near-death experience in 2010 followed by resurrection in a reduced...
View ArticleFinally, a Permanent Estate Tax, Though Just for the Wealthy Few
After more than a decade of nearly constant change, the federal estate tax is finally permanent. It’s a bit more onerous than last year’s version but still only a shadow of its former self. New tables...
View ArticleSame-Sex Couples and Taxes
The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was not primarily a tax law but it certainly affects the federal taxes that same-sex couples pay. In fact, taxes are the basis for the second of the two cases...
View ArticleThrow Momma from the Train
There may be no provision in tax law more bizarre than the estate tax. In just a year and a few days, on Jan. 1, 2010, the levy will expire and estates of any size will be passed on tax-free. A year...
View ArticleThe Estate Tax: Hit and Myth
President Obama wants to maintain the 2009 rules on the estate tax—in effect allowing couples with assets of as much as $7 million to pass on their wealth tax free. Amazingly, this has some critics of...
View ArticleDeath Panels and the Estate Tax
I’ve been struggling to understand the overheated rhetoric surrounding the proposal that allows Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. I think I get it now: It is all about the death tax. Here is...
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The Incredible Shrinking Estate Tax
The estate tax is only a faint shadow of its former self. In 2009, less than one-quarter of one percent of deaths—just 5,500 decedents—will leave taxable estates, the smallest percentage since at least...
View ArticleThe Estate Tax Debate: Watch the Rate, Not the Exclusion
It is almost 2010, and Congress is scrambling to figure out what it is going to do about the estate tax. In some perverse way, it’s fun to watch lawmakers dive into a mess largely of their own making....
View ArticleEstate Tax Whiplash
Thanks to Senate gridlock, taxpayers engaged in estate planning will suffer whiplash over coming months as the federal estate tax disappears and reappears, possibly unexpectedly and retroactively. When...
View Article2010: Get Ready for a Tax-a-palooza
Let’s face it, from a tax policy perspective, 2009 was a bust. Except for creating a bunch of new credits in the name of economic stimulus, Washington pretty much ignored the revenue code. 2010 will be...
View ArticleDie Now
If you’re single, not in great health, and are worth a lot but not a really huge lot, you could do your heirs a favor and die today or tomorrow. Sure, you may want to hang around to ring in the New...
View ArticleAn Estate Tax Deal: Pay Now, Die Later
News reports suggest that the Senate may soon consider restoring the estate tax with an option allowing people to prepay their tax before they die. Details are apparently still in flux as senators...
View ArticleIn Life, Baseball and the Estate Tax, Timing is Everything
I came of age as a Royals fan, and I agree with George Brett’s comments at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, “I don’t like those Yankees still”. George Steinbrenner’s Yankees tortured my beloved...
View ArticlePhilanthropy and the Estate Tax
When President Obama proposed to cap the value of itemized deductions at 28 percent, the philanthropic sector came out foursquare against the idea, claiming that it would decimate charitable...
View ArticleNo Estate Tax, But 2010 Still May Not Be So Great for Heirs
No joke: The other day a financial planner told me about a client who asked if he could rework his father’s end-of-life advance directive to take into account the ever-changing estate tax. In other...
View ArticleEstate Taxes, Capital Gains, and Paperwork
The one-year lapse of the federal estate tax this year came with the unwelcome requirement that heirs assume their benefactors’ bases for some assets they inherit in 2010, as Howard Gleckman explained...
View ArticleState Estate Taxes: Windfall Gold in Expiring Tax Cuts
As Congress delays action on extending the 2001-03 tax cuts, state revenue officers may be secretly hoping for continued legislative paralysis. Why? Because the federal estate tax, repealed for this...
View ArticleDOMA’s Demise and Federal Taxes
Same-sex couples are cheering the Supreme Court’s striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), but the tax consequences are more of a mixed bag. For many couples, federal recognition of same-sex...
View ArticleWhat Will Supreme Court Decision on DOMA Mean for the IRS?
I’m celebrating today’s Supreme Court ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) with my friends and relatives whose marriages are today, finally, accorded equal status to mine. But I am a tax geek...
View ArticleThe Demise of Estate Tax Planning
A fascinating story in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal reports what I suppose was an inevitable trend: With the estate tax exemption now up to $5.25 million ($10.5 million for couples) estate tax...
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