
Gift and estate tax uncertainty is not new. Over the past several years, we have seen the amount a person can leave free of estate tax utilizing their estate tax exclusion amount rise from $600,000 in 1997 to $11,580,000 in the year 2020, with several stops in between. We have had one year of estate tax repeal, in 2010. In 2012, we were on the brink of the estate tax exclusion amount dropping from $5,120,000 to $1,000,000, but the law was changed at the eleventh hour to prevent that from happening.
Even the current law contains a provision that will cause the exclusion amount to drop to $5,000,000 plus an inflation adjustment in the year 2026 (resulting in an exclusion amount of approximately $6,000,000).