The Winter of our Discontent?The Winter of our Discontent?

Gridlock continued in Washington throughout most of last year. On inauguration day, the new administration put a freeze on new government regulations, which included the proposed regulations (proposed regs) under Internal Revenue Code Section 2704. Nearly nine months later, the Treasury proposed to withdraw the proposed regs as too burdensome on taxpayers. The formal freeze on regulations seemed to carry over informally to few valuation cases emerging from the courts. Also contributing to the uncertain environment in the trusts and estates community was the slow movement on tax reform and associated estate tax repeal. The administration’s outline for tax reform¹ wasn’t made public until late September; Congress released the initial versi...