Axa Financial Supports U.S. Estate-Tax Reform.

The on-again, off-again nature of the federal estate tax leaves people uncertain in the estate-planning process.

Congress would be better advised to reform rather than repeal the federal estate tax, a top official of Axa Financial Inc. said. "Our position is that we are in favor of estate-tax reform, but we are not in favor of tax repeal unless Congress can guarantee never to bring back estate taxes again," said Judy Faucett, senior vice president of Axa Financial, a unit of the French financial-services giant Axa.

Faucett told investment analysts that the estate tax, first adopted in the United States in 1796, has been adopted and repealed four or five times. "Every time there is a war or threat of a war, Congress enacts an estate tax," Faucett said. "And when the war debt is repaid, they stop the tax."

The on-again, off-again nature of the federal estate tax leaves people uncertain in the estate-planning process, she noted. "People doing estate planning will drop their insurance policy if there's no estate tax. Then, if it's reinstituted, they find themselves uninsurable," Faucett said. "It creates instability."

Axa Financial thinks it's appropriate for Congress to increase the size of exemptions "perhaps with a larger exemption for family-owned businesses and family-owned farms," she said.

Faucett also said Axa Financial was focusing on growing its life insurance business substantially over the next few years. Annuity sales, executive-benefits programs and estate-planning initiatives figure prominently in that goal.

In selling employers on executive benefits plans, Axa has a leg up on its competitors, Faucett said. The company is able to provide its agents with "significant back-office and technical support for a product that goes on for 40 to 60 years," she said. "You have to have a good plan for administering these in place."