On Friday, the IRS issued taxpayer-friendly guidelines allowing certain estates to make a late portability election if they had previously failed to make a timely election (Rev. Proc. 2017-34). Portability elections allow surviving spouses to use a decedent’s unused exemption amount for estate and gift taxes purposes. Previously, the IRS provided a simplified method for obtaining an extension for filing, but that grieving-spouse-friendly method expired at the end of 2014. Since then, the regulations available for filing an extension have been onerous and time-consuming. The new method for filing an extension provided under Rev. Proc. 2017-34 demands much less time and effort.
See Sally P. Schreiber, IRS Provides Simplified Method to Request an Extension of Time to Make a Portability Election, Journal of Accountancy, June 9, 2017.
Special thanks to Jerome Borison (Professor at University of Denver Sturm College of Law) & Kevin Staker for bringing this article to my attention.
