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Saturday, March 09, 2019

Bernie Sanders’ Tax Proposals

We all know that come 2025 the aggregate transfers covered by the unified credit for estate and gift taxes will revert to pre-Trump levels (subject to adjustments for inflation), thus ensnaring more taxpayers in the estate and gift tax web. Of course, should a Democrat be re-elected in 2020, changes in taxes to the higher side may occur even sooner than 2025.

A recent tax bill filed by Senator Bernie Sanders, a candidate for President, gives some insight about what tax legislation might look like if a Democrat is elected – more so if he is elected, but perhaps also as to other Democratic candidates.

Some key changes he would make to the high side include:

a. Increases in estate, gift and GST rates, to a maximum of 77% for members of the billionaire’s club;

b reduction in the unified credit exclusion amount to $3,500,000;

c. elimination of entity valuation discounts as to entity assets that are not business assets;

d. imposing a 10 year minimum term for grantor retained annuity trusts;

e. subjecting grantor trusts to estate tax inclusion at the death of the deemed owner;

f. limiting the GST exemption to a 50 year term; and

g. reduction in the annual gift tax exclusion.

These changes would be good news for tax planners, and bad news for those of moderate or higher wealth.

The old Chinese curse says – may you live in interesting times. I think most of us can agree, at least from a tax perspective if not a political perspective, we are all cursed under that measure.

S.309 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)

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