Wait and SeeWait and See

Five years ago, I began my Valuation Committee “Year in Review” article referencing the classic play, “Waiting for Godot,” to reflect the estate-planning environment at the time. The estate-planning community had waited all year for Congressional action on estate tax provisions scheduled to sunset at the end of 2010. If Congress did nothing, the tax rates and exemptions snapped back to the provisions of 2001. The wait lasted until late December 2010 when Congress passed a 2-year patch to extend the estate tax and its sunset to the end of 2012. It’s fitting that in the year of Yogi Berra’s passing, we have déjà vu all over again as this time, estate planners wait impatiently for the arrival of Internal Revenue Service action. The estate-p...