When is the Best Time to Plan Your Estate?
The estate tax laws of the past few years have been so inconsistent that many people are still “waiting for things to even out” before they create (or update) an estate plan. This wait-and-see approach seems perfectly reasonable on the surface; after all, nobody wants to spend hard-earned money creating an estate plan only to have it rendered obsolete within a year. Our firm is here to let you know that there’s bad news and there’s good news…
The bad news is that estate tax law doesn’t appear to be settling down any time soon. We all know the estate tax was repealed in 2010, and then reinstated in 2011. And now, as this article from AARP mentions, “federal estate tax rates are slated to change again in 2013, unless Congress decides otherwise.” Furthermore, there are quite a few other mercurial tax laws that have a significant impact on estate planning, including the capital gains tax and the gift tax, to name just two. Both of these factors mean that the future of estate planning is still cloudy.
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