Well its official. The estate tax will expire as scheduled on Jan. 1st. What will take its place? The congressional leadership is promising a renewed tax retroactive to Jan 1st.  The renewed tax will Reportedly be the same as 2009.  There will be a $3,500,000 per person exemption with a maximum rate of 45%.  But will this happen? If Congress does nothing the tax reappears in 2011 with a $1,000,000 exemption and a 55% rate. The Republicans are proposing a $5,000,000 exemption and a 35% top rate. Oh and by the way, the generation skipping tax expires and the gift tax rate drops to 35% also on Jan 1st.  Fun for planners and citizens as well. Flexibility is now more than ever the name of the game. There  are some opportunities but more traps in the mess. Woe to you if the tax is reinstated retroactive to Jan1st 2010 and a large estate has not planned for it.  A bigger problem will be if no change is made and smaller estates are now taxable. Stay tuned for developments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under John T. Prahl Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.