Repeal of Estate Tax Unlikely to Trickle Down.Congress wants to end the federal estate tax. That's the tax paid when children and others inherit To receive property according to the state laws of intestate succession from a decedent who has failed to execute a valid will, or, where the term is applied in a more general sense, to receive the property of a decedent by will. inherit v. a large amount of money. President Clinton vetoed repeal The Annulment or abrogation of a previously existing statute by the enactment of a later law that revokes the former law. The revocation of the law can either be done through an express repeal , saying it was merely a special break for the rich. President Bush favors repeal or at least a big reduction in the tax. So conditions currently favor a reduction, at the very least. Two questions arise: Would you be affected by an estate-tax cut, and if so, is there something you should be doing now? The first thing to know is that few Americans pay estate taxes. This fact is widely misunderstood mis·un·der·stood v. Past tense and past participle of misunderstand. adj. 1. Incorrectly understood or interpreted. 2. . Opponents of the tax cut renamed it the "death tax," leading many people to believe it's levied on everyone at death. Some Americans have purchased cash-value life insurance cash-value life insurance A type of life insurance in which part of the premium is used to provide death benefits and the remainder is available to earn interest. Thus, cash-value life insurance is both a protection plan and a savings plan. to offset this tax when in fact they will never owe it. They also may have started unnecessary trusts. Here are the actual rules today: * There is zero tax at death on money left to a spouse spouse A legal marriage partner as defined by state law or a charity. * You are not taxed on the total amount of your assets. The tax applies to your "estate." Essentially, that's the net worth that you pass to heirs -- the value of your assets minus your debts and certain expenses. * Only larger estates are taxed. Currently, singles pay on net worth exceeding $675 000 (rising to $1 million in 2006). A married couple with a simple estate plan can exempt $1.35 million from the tax (rising to $2 million in 2006). So before you worry about this tax, find out if you're going to owe it. The Republican majority backs total estate-tax repeal, even, for billionaires. Many Democrats and some Republicans favor reducing the top bracket In programming, brackets (the [ and ] characters) are used to enclose numbers and subscripts. For example, in the C statement int menustart [4] = ; the [4] indicates the number of elements in the array, and the contents are enclosed in curly braces. (55 percent) and raising the exemption. If estates worth, say, $4 million were exempt, hardly anyone would pay. Now let's go Let's Go may refer to: Television
If you have money on hand that you know you'll never need, you could use it to invest in a policy for your kids. |
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