Thursday, April 11, 2013

Obama proposes rolling back the estate tax exemption

The Obama budget includes a truly odd detail in the estate tax area. He proposes, as he has done before, going back to the 2009 estate tax regime, with a 45% tax rate and an exemption of $3.5 million and no inflation indexing.  Presumably he'd go back to the $1 million gift tax exemption, though this detail wasn't mentioned. This rollback despite the fact that Congress just made permanent a higher exemption and lower tax rate.

But that's not the odd part.  Obama proposes going back to 2009 in 2018, two years into the term of the next president!  By some crystal ball gazing, he's determined that 2018 will be the optimum moment for a massive estate tax increase. But for the rest of his term, low estate tax rates will be just fine.

He can't be serious, can he?
Posted by Jim Gust at 9:22 AM

2 comments:

JLM said...

He's as serious as the Republicans who still tack "Repeal the Death Tax" onto any bill they can find.

Why do elected officials insist on acting like junior high kids?

10:26 PM
Jim Gust said...

I agree, elected official are immature.

But at least those who want to repeal the death tax want to do it immediately.

I'd have more respect for Obama's position if he wanted to raise estate taxes next year (can't do it in the middle of a calendar year). There's be some logic to that, and there's a fiscal need. Bit to schedule an increase two years after he's out of office? For the sole reason of changing the 10-year scoring of his budget? Why even bother with a 10-year estimate, if you're going to fill it with hypotheticals?

11:01 AM

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