I'll check it in the morning. I'm 100% sure that it doesn't kick in at $675,000. I think it is something like $6 or 7 million when the 55% rate does kick in. But as I said, anyone with more than a million or two dollars can hire people to help them get lots of sheltered money, unless that money is, e.g., in a house or something really illiquid like that.
At any rate, we are certainly in agreement that the $675,000 or whatever the exemption is right now is too low. Inflation has made that rate a little ridiculous, even Democrats recognize that, and are proposing a plan that will up it considerably (to around $3 or 4 million, I think, with various extra provisions for farms and small businesses). There was even an article in the WSJ which, surprisingly to me, quoted several tax people as saying that the Democratic plan would be more beneficial to most people who are actually affected by the estate tax than the Republican plan would (I think it was pretty recent, and was a page 1, clm 6 article). |
