Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Estate Taxes - This Will Be Interesting

As you may know, there are currently no estate taxes for anyone dying in 2010. The conventional wisdom is that Congress would pass a new estate tax law this year and make it retroactive to January 1, 2010. However, at least two very wealthy people (and probably more) have died during 2010; Dan Duncan (worth about $9 billion) and George Steinbrenner (worth about $1.1 billion). Click on their names for related articles. If Congress makes new estate taxes retroactive, their estates would undoubtedly fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see what happens.