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There is currently no tax on the estates of those dying during 2010. Although Congress may reinstate the tax retroactively in 2010, perhaps as part of broader tax reform, this is by no means a certainty.

If Congress fails to act, a few thousand very wealthy families will have reason to celebrate, while tens of thousands of taxpayers of more modest means will pay capital gains on inherited assets — and executors will face additional and confusing administrative burdens. And if Congress does change the law retroactively, extensive litigation over inheritances is almost guaranteed.

Congress has had nine years to prevent this from happening but hasn’t been able to. Under the provisions of a Bush-era tax-cut bill enacted in 2001, the value of estates exempt from the tax has been gradually raised over the past eight years while the tax rate on estates has been reduced, so that in 2009 only an individual estate worth $3.5 million or more is taxed, at a rate of 45 percent. For the year 2010, according to the 2001 law, the estate tax disappears entirely, only to be restored in 2011 at a rate of 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more, which is where things stood before the 2001 change.

Loss of Step-Up Means Step Down for Many Taxpayers

The catch for taxpayers of more modest means, however, is that for 2010 the estate tax is replaced with a 15 percent capital gains tax on inherited assets that are later sold. Normally someone inheriting property at an individual’s death gets a “step-up in basis” in the property. That is, the value of the property for determining capital gains tax due is calculated at the time it is inherited, not when it was originally bought.

But the law eliminating the estate tax in 2010 also largely does away with the basis step-up rules. This means that those inheriting estates will have to pay capital gains taxes on any assets sold based on the original price paid for the asset, after an exemption for the first $1.3 million in capital gains (plus $3 million for assets transferred to a surviving spouse).

Let’s say your father dies and leaves you a home worth $1.5 million and a $500,000 portfolio of stocks purchased at various times over the past 40 years. If you decided to sell any of these assets, you’d normally pay little or no capital gains tax on the sales. The new provisions mean that you have to calculate capital gains based on the value of the home and the stocks when your father bought them, not when you inherited them. That could be very expensive, not to mention time-consuming in trying to ascertain the original price your father paid for everything.

“If we do not extend our estate tax law, all taxpayers, all heirs will be subject to massive, massive confusion in trying to determine the value of their underlying asset,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) said on the Senate floor.

The chief tax counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee estimates that while extending the 2009 estate tax law would affect about 6,000 estates, 71,400 estates could face new capital gains taxes if the estate tax disappears. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “at least 62,500 of these are estates that would not owe any estate tax if the 2009 rules were continued and that thus would be adversely affected by estate tax repeal. Farm and business estates would constitute a disproportionately large share of this group.” Small farms and businesses are the groups whose interests opponents of the estate tax have claimed they are defending.

Couples With Credit Shelter Trusts at Risk

The new world of no estate tax places at particular risk couples who have so-called “credit shelter” or “bypass” trusts that are designed to allow both spouses to take advantage of their respective estate tax exemptions. These are common arrangements used in estate planning for married couples. With the estate tax gone, the wording of these trusts could be interpreted as completely bypassing the surviving spouse when the first spouse dies, meaning a surviving spouse would get nothing without the expensive process of claiming her “elective share.” For explanations of all this, click here and here. Married couples with such trusts should consult their attorney.

The House passed a bill in early December permanently extending the 2009 estate tax rules, which will bring in an estimated $25 billion for 2009 by imposing the 45 percent rate on estates over $3.5 million (or $7 million for a couple). The Senate’s Democratic leadership wanted to pass a similar bill and put it on President Obama’s desk before the estate tax expired at the end of 2009, but they were blocked by united Senate Republicans who prefer a lower tax rate of 35 percent and a higher exclusion amount of $5 million ($10 million for couples).

The Perils of Going Retroactive

Sen. Baucus has pledged to try to restore the estate tax retroactively in 2010. This would undo the capital gains increase, but it could also create fertile ground for lawsuits by those whose family members die between January 1, 2010, and the date when any retroactive law is enacted.

“I can guarantee this: if they succeed in getting retroactive in hiking the death tax from zero to 45 percent, there are going to be lawsuits,” said Dick Patten, president of the American Family Business Foundation, which opposes the estate tax. “Its going to be messy, its going to be noisy.” (For an excellent discussion by Forbes.com of the mess that a lapse in the estate tax could create, click here. “Beneficiaries will deal with uncertainty for years,” warns one tax expert.)

In a 1994 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution’s ban on the enactment of ex-post facto laws doesn’t apply to tax legislation, provided the retroactive application is “supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by rational means”. United States v. Carlton, 512 U.S. 26 (1994). Since most estates don’t file tax returns until about nine months after someone dies, if Congress can come to an agreement quickly in 2010 the problems caused by a retroactive law may be limited. But Bloomberg.com notes that “The pressure to reach agreement may breathe new life into” the Republicans’ “compromise proposal” of a 35 percent tax on couples’ estates worth more than $10 million.

For more on the implications of the disappearance of the estate tax, see CBS MoneyWatch’s “Estate Tax: What You Need to Know for 2010,” SmartMoney’s “The Federal Estate Tax Is Dead: Now What?,” and Kiplinger’s “FAQs on the Death of the Estate Tax.”

For ClientCare Members, anticipate an update to ensure that your family can take full advantage of the limited step-up in basis.

Why do I like Retirement Trusts best of all beneficiaries for retirement assets? Because unlike any other beneficiary, with an Irrevocable Retirement Trust, we can achieve every objective clients have for their estate planning. (Although the trust has to be irrevocable — according to one case in Kansas — it’s easy to replace it with a new trust as long as the plan participant is alive and well.)

We can achieve estate tax planning goals by keeping the first spouse’s retirement assets out of the second spouse’s taxable estate; especially valuable if the retirement plan is a substantial portion of the estate. This is applying the A-B formula that allows married couples to double the amount they can pass on to beneficiaries free of estate tax to retirement assets.

We can maximize the income-tax deferral benefits of the retirement asset by ensuring that the stretch-out is fully utilized. (That means that your beneficiaries can withdraw and pay tax on the retirement plan over the course of their entire lives, rather than all at once.  If they have to withdraw it all right away, it may put them in a higher tax bracket so that they have to pay very high income tax rates on the inheritance.  Imagine a $1M IRA reduced to $650k through income taxes.  Imagine the beneficiary finding out that it was avoidable…)

We can provide asset protection, divorce protection, remarriage protection and disinheritance protection to all beneficiaries, from the spouse to the grandchildren. Unlike in an RLT’s conduit trust provisions (at our firm, a standard clause we include that, in some cases, allows a stretch-out), a Retirement Trust can contain Accumulation Trust provisions that allow the trustee to accumulate required minimum distributions inside of the trust instead of distributing them to the beneficiary each year. This allows true protection because there is no right to attach or take away.

Two cases (one from Delaware – a powerful state), have recently held that an inherited retirement plan has NO asset protection on its own.  Listen, while you own your own retirement plan, you get great asset protection, especially if that retirement plan is under ERISA — 401(k)s, 403(b)s, etc.  If you get sued or go bankrupt, your entire 401(k) is protected (the protection for contributory IRAs is limited; comment below if you want details), no matter how big it is.  Your beneficiaries don’t get this protection.

Finally, we can ensure the asset is never accidentally probated. You may wonder how it could ever be probated.  All it takes is for the primary beneficiary to fail to complete her own beneficiary designation form.  Or the custodian could lose the designation form.  Or you could name a minor child as a beneficiary.  Lots of paths to probate.

The Irrevocable Retirement Trust is an estate planner’s dream for her clients!  DEFINITELY consider it if your retirement assets make up more than 20% of your total estate or exceed $300k.

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Many professionals reasonably believe that Congress could never do anything as outrageous as allowing the Permanent Estate Tax Repeal to expire completely on December 31, 2010 and return the exemption to where it was in 2001, when the Repeal was passed.

I believe they could. In fact, a growing number of professionals are coming to believe that expiration of the Estate Tax Repeal is our most likely future.

One plausible scenario was painted by Stan Miller, a Principal with Wealth Counsel at that estate planning organization’s national annual symposium, which I attended last month. Imagine, Mr. Miller posited, a late 2009 in which Congress is facing a 2010 with no estate tax, followed by expiration of the Repeal (what one of my clients called a “throw momma from the train” year).  Further imagine that Congress is continuing to approve expensive stimulus packages while economic pressures and public pressures to hold tax increases down are strong.

The proponents of full repeal have no incentive to compromise: their billionaire constituents don’t care about the difference between a $1M exemption and a $4M exemption. The proponents of higher taxes have no incentive to compromise, they just have to wait for expiration of the Repeal.

So Congress, to avoid the “throw momma” social policy problems and the nightmarish capital gains basis problems that we will face in just a few months if they do not act, could enact a one-year”patch”. They could extend the $3.5m exemption through December 31, 2010, and then… do nothing. Allow the Repeal to expire.

I certainly understand the optimism of many clients who expect more from their elected representatives. But when 2011 rolls around, we’ll be standing by with our toolkit of estate tax planning strategies for those clients who find themselves suddenly, and taxably, “wealthy.”

And the lead attorney is not Diedre Dennis Wachbrit, single mother.  Instead, it’s Diedre Wachbrit Braverman, remarried mother of two fourth-graders. I changed my name when I wed Bennett Braverman, of Boulder, Colorado, in May. Bennett is also an estate planning attorney, and the kids just love him.

I have another big change to tell you about before I get down to the serious business of blogging about legal topics. (I’ve got some good ones already written for including a three-part series on a topic that generates a lot of questions: retirement plan beneficiary designations!)

The other big change is that our firm once again has an Associate Attorney, Mrs. Annabel Blanchard Spatola. A recent law school grad, Mrs. Spatola decided early on that she wanted to focus on estate planning and related areas. We are fortunate to have her because she is a quick learner and she shares the team’s dedication to client service, integrity and the right result, every time.

So please consider this blog a resource for learning (use the comments area for questions), and for sharing. We will continue to email you blog snippets but if you want to see blog articles as soon as they’re published, subscribe to this blog using an RSS reader.

- Diedre Wachbrit Braverman

The IRS is especially fond of auditing those who use Schedule C. If you have a business, you can avoid Schedule C by incorporating (call us for details).

A few other interesting facts from the article:

- Most audits now are done by mail

- Enforcement revenues dropped from 2007 to 2008

- Anyone can “tip off” the IRS that you are cheating and the agency is likely to investigate.

When you send the notice to the Department of Healthcare Services, they will respond with a claim for repayment of all the payments they made after the Medi-Cal recipient turned 55 years old. This claim will be asserted against any assets the recipient owned when he died whether they are in a revocable living trust, a probate, an IRA or most other forms of ownership.

There are some limitations. Medi-Cal will not take the home while a spouse is still alive. In that situation, Medi-Cal will take the home when the surviving spouse dies. Now if the family is survived by a minor, blind or disabled child, Medi-Cal will not take the home at all. Finally, Medi-Cal cannot take the home if it has been properly transferred into a Medi-Cal House Trust.

With the Medi-Cal House Trust, the elder retains the right to live in the house for as long as he is able but the rest of the interest in the house is transferred to the beneficiaries of the trust (usually the children). A successful Medi-Cal House Trust ensures that the beneficiaries get a step-up in capital gains basis, that the house is not subject to estate tax, that the elder never has to move against his wishes and that Medi-Cal can make no claim against the property.

P.S. For those loyal readers who are interested, I’m delighted to announce my engagement to Bennett Braverman, another estate planning attorney.

Source: NAELA e-bulletin and Baltimore Sun. For the full story go to: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/investing/bal-bz.ym.ambrose22jul22,0,4246352.column
To go to the calculator: http://ssa.gov/estimator/

Verdict: $22,566,373

But there were other verdicts this month too. Here’s one:

Spilled coffee caused a driver to swerve across the centerline and collide head-on with a car that then rolled over, leaving the 48-year old driver with devastating injuries.

Verdict: $16,789,835

Source: California Bar Journal

Sean Condon writes about when it might be appropriate to include the whole family in the estate planning process in his article Estate Planning Can Be A Multigenerational Matter. Condon’s article mentions specific situations in which families would want to consider planning as a whole unit, including the following:

Planning for succession within a family business.

When multiple generations of families own property together.

If the family is responsible for significant debt.

If a family has a history of supporting certain charitable foundations and desires to continue doing so.

To provide for family members who live out of the country.

To make provisions for a non-traditional family situation, such as unmarried partners.

In many situations, you won’t have to choose between an estate plan that is private and one for your extended family. There are many ways to create individual estate plans for each nuclear family while still respecting and arranging for matters that affect the extended family as a whole. Of course, the process is easier if each nuclear family is able to work with the same attorney, but it is certainly not necessary as long as each attorney and family is willing to communicate and act together.

If you aren’t sure if you should plan privately for your family or include your whole multigenerational unit in the process, give our office a call. We can help you look down the road ahead and create a plan of action that will make every member of your family feel secure.