Here is a short
article about a Texas oil tycoon, Dan Duncan (pictured below), that I have mentioned to several of our clients. As many of you are aware, the federal estate tax has been repealed for 2010. Mr. Duncan died in 2010 with about a $9 billion dollar estate. If Mr. Duncan died three months earlier, $9 billion would have been subject to a federal estate tax of at least 45 percent, which means the IRS would have received about $4 billion from Duncan's estate. He couldn't have passed at a better time for estate planning purposes (mixed emotions from the heirs I'm sure).
Uncle Sam may find comfort in the fact that the heirs will still have to pay capital gains taxes upon the sale of some of his assets, as well as the fact that Congress may still retroactively apply the federal estate tax to January 1, 2010. But if Congress wants to avoid a strong Constitutional challenge from the heirs, they'll need to get their head out of the healthcare game and into tax policy before year end.
