During my 30+ years as a senior attorney at the IRS and my subsequent career as a tax consultant, I have see an ongoing struggle over the rate of tax to be imposed on estates. Generally this ebb and flow has pitted Republican party attempts to eliminate the estate tax vs. the Democratic party's attempts to increase the estate tax rate.
The peripheral battle has seen many of the traditional "shelters" lost but offset in many ways by the unlimited marital deduction and the graduated $5.4 credit shelter and portability. Additionally the Congress imposed a generation skipping tax to prevent extremely wealthy families from escaping estate tax in successive generations.
Hillary Clinton proposes raising taxes on high-income taxpayers, modifying
taxation of multinational corporations, repealing fossil fuel tax incentives, and increasing estate and gift taxes.
His plan would significantly reduce marginal tax rates on individuals and businesses, increase standard deduction amounts to nearly four times current levels, and curtail many tax expenditures.
This coupled with the attack on Section 2704 FLP discounts will mean that virtually every family of substantial wealth will have a serious dent put in its attempt to pass wealth from one generation to the next. See our post Do You Have a FLP or LLC With Valuation Discounts? You Better Talk With Your Tax Advisor!
This factual pattern should alert the most skillful of estate planners to create new techniques to offset this impending increase in estate tax rates.
For more details see our previous post Time to Compare Candidate's Tax Plans Again! where we discussed Hillary's plan for Restoring fair taxation on multi-million dollar estates.
Robert S. Blumenfeld - Prior to joining Marini & Associates, P.A., he spent 32 years as the Senior Attorney with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Office of Deputy Commissioner, International.
Read more at: Tax Times blog
