Rather than a cause for celebration, "no one believes that Congress in its ultimate wisdom, with all the deficits looming, with a recession and two wars … would ever allow the estate tax to lapse. But that's what's happening," said tax attorney Martin Press.
"It's created great uncertainty," he told USA Today.
The confusion comes, in part, from a wide agreement that Congress will either reinstate the tax that brought in revenues of $26.5 billion in 2008 or shift the tax to a capital gains levy on property that is inherited and then sold.
"A lot of middle-income Americans could end up being affected by a tax they never expected," Marguerite Mount, managing director of the Mercadien Group told the newspaper.
Currently, the estate tax will not be in effect in 2010, but return the following year at a rate of 55 percent for inheritance of more than $1 million.
But the tax could be applied to 2010 if Congress amends the law to include the year retroactively, a step that could provoke lawsuits, the president of the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils Michael Halloran said.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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