Jeffrey A. Maine

Wealth Transfer Tax Planning for 2013 and Beyond

In December of 2010 Congress revived the temporarily defunct federal estate tax and the generation skipping transfer tax (GSTT) and ushered in a new era of federal wealth transfer taxation. The estate and the GST taxes had expired the previous January, making 2010 the year to die among the elderly rich. The reenactment of a revised version of the estate tax and of the GSTT makes this a propitious time to publish this article summarizing the operation of the federal wealth transfer taxes and describing the basic tax planning techniques for wealth transmission. This article is designed to bring the general practitioner into the current wealth transfer tax planning picture and provides references to more detailed treatments of particular topics within that field.