Taxation & Estate Planning

25 Things You Need To Know About The New Estate Tax Laws: 1-5

By Joel A. Schoenmeyer

INTRODUCTION

1. It's formally known as the "Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010," and you can find the full text here (as a PDF). Instead of repeating that title over and over again, I'll refer to it as "The Act," and references to section numbers will be to The Act unless I indicate otherwise.

2. Since The Act refers a lot to the "Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001," part of the so-called Bush Tax Cuts, you may want to have it handy as well (you can find it here).

3. OK, this isn't really a thing you need to know as much as it is a gripe. Full text laws should be really easy to find, and readily available on government websites. It's bad enough that these laws tend to be very long and hard to understand -- at least they should be out there for everyone to see. I shouldn't have to spend a half-hour stumbling around at the Library of Congress website, getting confronted by dead link after dead link.

4. My focus is on Title III of The Act, "Temporary Estate Tax Relief." Title III consists of Sections 301 - 304 of The Act.

5. The biggest point I want to make about The Act is that we need to focus on the word "temporary." Let me say that again, in all caps, because it's so important: THE STUFF IN TITLE III OF THE ACT IS TEMPORARY.

Full post as published by Death and Taxes Blog on January 06, 2011 (boomark / email).