As Estate Tax Reaches 100, There Is Debate Over Its Continued Existence

On September 8, 2015, the estate tax reached its 100th year in existence.  This Forbes column discusses Professor Paul Caron’s argument for keeping the estate tax in place.  Caron currently calls reducing the federal exemption amount to $3.5 million and raising the estate tax rate to 45%.  The Professor also called “for limiting valuation discounts in family businesses, putting a life-time cap on transfers to grantor retained annuity trusts and only allowing GST (generation-skipping tax) exemptions to amounts actually transferred within 50 years.” 

There is currently a significant amount of debate over the estate tax.  Some politicians are calling for raising the tax rate and lowering the exemption amount, while other politicians are putting forward proposals to eliminate the estate tax in its entirety.  Regardless of what side of the debate you are on there is no denying that the estate tax debate will continue to be a major political issue.

See Peter J. Reilly, Estate Tax Hits 100th Birthday And Paul Caron Calls For Many Happy Returns, Forbes, September 15, 2015.

Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.