No estate tax reform this year?

Deborah Jacobs, writing in Forbes, outlines how we got to the year without estate taxes, how prospects for retroactive restoration have dimmed, and concludes, "It now looks increasingly likely that 2010 will be a year without either tax, followed by what amounts to a drastic increase in those taxes next year."

Our regular readers know that as the law now reads, the exemption will fall to $1 million, the top tax rate will zoom to 55%, and the number of estates that will be required to file will be roughly an order of magnitude greater than it was in 2009.

Could a golden era of wealth transfer be coming to an end?