Progress?

The Senate is quiet these days concerning the federal estate tax, but there may have been some slight progress. As you may recall from the early days of this saga, the House passed H.R. 4154 on Dec. 3 and sent it over to the Senate. The House bill would extend the $3.5 million exclusion amount for the estate tax and make it permanent. The Senate's original reaction seemed to be complete indifference and nothing apparently got done. In the meantime the federal estate tax was repealed for a year by a law passed in 2001.

But on Dec. 24 H.R. 4154 was read for the first time, and after the lengthy Senate recess, it was read for the second time on Jan. 20 and placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Somebody is pushing this bill forward and perhaps it will come up for a vote someday. At least it wasn't tabled in committee.

Finally getting a definitive answer on the estate tax is something every estate planner is looking for. I was at an estate planning class earlier today and heard some of the top estate planning lawyers in this county say that they don't know what to do next. Several of them have written letters to their clients about the estate planning problems that we now face, but none of them have actually mailed the letters. We are all concerned about upsetting clients over a problem that seems real this week, but could disappear as soon as the Senate passes a bill such as H.R. 4154.