{"id":57,"date":"2008-09-20T20:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patellawoffices.com\/blog\/?p=57"},"modified":"2008-09-20T20:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-21T01:30:00","slug":"mccain-obamas-estate-tax-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/general-estate-planning-and-probate\/mccain-obamas-estate-tax-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain &#038; Obama&#8217;s Estate Tax Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Wall Street Journal: <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article_print\/SB121495543483521281.html\">Stayin&#8217; Alive: How to Cheat The Estate Tax<\/a>, by Tom Herman:<\/p>\n<p>The Obama Plan. Sen. Obama proposes a $3.5 million exclusion in 2009 and thereafter, with a top rate at 45%. His plan will &#8220;fully repeal the estate tax for 99.7% of households,&#8221; says Jason Furman, Sen. Obama&#8217;s economic policy director. &#8220;He would add certainty and stability to the tax code by making the 2009 estate tax parameters permanent, exempting estates of up to $7 million for a married couple,&#8221; Mr. Furman says. The Obama plan &#8220;retains the estate tax for the top 0.3% of estates in order to restore fairness to the tax system, helping to pay for a tax cut for 95% of workers and their families.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The McCain Plan. Sen. McCain proposes raising the exclusion to $5 million per person and cutting the top federal estate-tax rate to 15%, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the senator&#8217;s senior policy adviser and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. This plan &#8220;should go into place ASAP after he is elected,&#8221; Mr. Holtz-Eakin says. &#8220;If the political climate makes it next to impossible to achieve full repeal, then Congress should look towards a compromise,&#8221; says Mr. Holtz-Eakin, referring to President Bush&#8217;s unsuccessful efforts to kill the estate tax permanently. He calls Sen. McCain&#8217;s plan &#8220;a compromise that holds the potential for breaking the logjam and providing some much-needed certainty.&#8221; Cutting the tax rate to 15% &#8220;would link the death tax with the current capital-gains tax rate,&#8221; Mr. Holtz-Eakin says. &#8220;By doing so, Americans will not be forced to pay more in death than they would if they had sold property prior to their death.&#8221; He also says that a $5 million exclusion &#8220;is generally thought by many to be the appropriate size to help small-business owners avoid cash-flow difficulties&#8221; upon the death of a family member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Wall Street Journal: Stayin&#8217; Alive: How to Cheat The Estate Tax, by Tom Herman: The Obama Plan. Sen. Obama proposes a $3.5 million exclusion in 2009 and thereafter, with a top rate at 45%. His plan will &#8220;fully repeal the estate tax for 99.7% of households,&#8221; says Jason Furman, Sen. Obama&#8217;s economic policy director. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-estate-planning-and-probate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}