Wednesday, January 19, 2011 NEET Tips
NEET Tips answers questions posed online to the NEET website
Is the estate tax going away?
No. On the federal level, the Tax Relief Act of 2010 extended the prior Bush tax cuts through 2012, but did not eliminate the estate tax as some in Congress wanted. Congress did raise the federal estate tax exemption amount to $5 million per person, reunited the estate tax with the gift tax, and introduced spousal portability of a deceased spouse's unused exemption amount.
In Vermont, meanwhile, the estate tax exemption amount rose from $2 million to $2.75 million in 2011, and is scheduled to rise again in 2012. Nonetheless, the estate tax persists on both the federal and state level at least for the next two years.
What will happen in 2013, after the estate tax provisions contained in the Tax Relief Act of 2010 expire? No one knows. Congress planned for the Tax Relief Act of 2010 to expire shortly after the next presidential election, so it is certain to be a campaign issue, and the future of the estate tax will likely turn on who wins the election in 2012. |