The Department of the Treasury has released the Treasury Green Book for Fiscal Year 2017, which provides explanations of the President’s budget proposals. One such proposal (remember…these are just proposals, not actual changes in the law) that may affect your estate planning, if passed, is found on page 177 of the Green Book and is re-printed here for your convenience:
RESTORE THE ESTATE, GIFT, AND GENERATION-SKIPPING TRANSFER (GST) TAX PARAMETERS IN EFFECT IN 2009
Current Law
The current estate, GST, and gift tax rate is 40 percent, and each individual has a lifetime exclusion of $5 million for estate and gift tax and $5 million for GST (indexed after 2011 for inflation from 2010). The surviving spouse of a person who dies after December 31, 2010, may be eligible to increase the surviving spouse’s exclusion amount for estate and gift tax purposes by the portion of the predeceased spouse’s exclusion that remained unused at the predeceased spouse’s death (in other words, the exclusion is “portable”).
Prior to the enactment of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), the maximum tax rate was 55 percent, plus a 5-percent surcharge on the amount of the taxable estate between approximately $10 million and $17.2 million (designed to recapture the benefit of the lower rate brackets). The exclusion for estate and gift tax purposes was $675,000 and was scheduled to increase to $1 million by 2006. Under EGTRRA, beginning in 2002, the top tax rate for all three types of taxes was reduced incrementally until it was 45 percent in 2007. In 2004, the exemption for estate taxes (but not for gift taxes) began to increase incrementally until it was $3.5 million in 2009, and the GST tax exemption and rate became unified with the estate tax exemption and rate. During this post-EGTRRA period through 2009, the gift tax exemption remained $1 million. Under EGTRRA, for 2010, the estate tax was to be replaced with carryover basis treatment of bequests, the GST tax was to be not applicable, and the gift tax was to remain in effect with a $1 million exclusion and a 35-percent tax rate. The EGTRRA provisions were scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, meaning that the estate tax and GST tax would be inapplicable for only one year.
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (TRUIRJCA) retroactively changed applicable law for 2010 by providing a top estate tax rate of 35 percent for taxpayers electing estate tax rather than carryover-basis treatment. It retroactively reinstated the GST tax and unified the exemption for estate, GST, and gift taxes beginning in 2011 with a $5 million total lifetime exclusion for estate and gift tax and for GST tax (indexed after 2011 for inflation from 2010). It also enacted the portability of the exemption between spouses for both gift and estate tax purposes. The TRUIRJCA provisions were scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) permanently raised the top tax rate for estate, GST, and gift taxes to 40 percent. It also made permanent all the substantive estate, GST and gift tax provisions as in effect during 2012. 178
Reasons for Change
ATRA retained a substantial portion of the tax cut provided to the most affluent taxpayers under TRUIRJCA that we cannot afford to continue. The United States needs an estate tax law that is fair and raises an appropriate amount of revenue.
Proposal
The proposal would make permanent the estate, GST, and gift tax parameters as they applied during 2009. The top tax rate would be 45 percent and the exclusion amount would be $3.5 million for estate and GST taxes, and $1 million for gift taxes. There would be no indexing for inflation. The proposal would confirm that, in computing gift and estate tax liabilities, no estate or gift tax would be incurred by reason of decreases in the applicable exclusion amount with respect to a prior gift that was excluded from tax at the time of the transfer. Finally, the unused estate and gift tax exclusion of a decedent electing portability and dying on or after the effective date of the proposal would be available to the decedent’s surviving spouse in full on the surviving spouse’s death, but would be limited during the surviving spouse’s life to the amount of remaining exemption the decedent could have applied to his or her gifts made in the year of his or her death.
The proposal would be effective for the estates of decedents dying, and for transfers made, after December 31, 2016.
Last year’s Green Book Proposal on the same topic can be read here.
