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Article: Does income tax planning now trump estate tax avoidance?(ESTATE PLANNING)
- Article from:
- National Underwriter Life & Health
- Article date:
- May 2, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 The National Underwriter Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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FOR DECADES, ESTATE PLANNING has been dominated by a desire to avoid a confiscatory federal estate tax. In 1976, the amount a decedent could pass tax-flee to non-charitable heirs was only $60,000. By the early 1980s it had increased to $175,000. These relatively small exemption amounts meant even middle class Americans had to design their estates to avoid the federal estate tax.
The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 ("TEFRA") effectively began to take the middle class out of the federal transfer tax system by the adoption of a series of reforms, including a $10,000 annual exclusion, an unlimited marital deduction and a phased-in unified tax credit ...