In addition to all the other balls the Obama administration is currently juggling, it looks as if it also plans to prevent the possibility of something truly macabre happening because of a law concerning 2010 that has been on the books for years.
As we all know, the estate tax is scheduled to disappear in 2010 before making a reappearance at 2001 levels in 2011. This bit of financial souffl was the brainchild of the now departed Bush administration, which specialized in whipping up such concoctions.
Even at the time this provision was enacted into law, nobody believed it would really unfold in this way. The amount of wink, wink' going on in Washington at the time was so great that whole cadres of congressmen and members of the executive branch were thought to have developed a facial tic en masse.
However, despite the fact that no one really expected the estate tax to vanish in 2010, especially as the budget deficits started to bloom in earnest, there was still uncertainty in the estate planning market because the law was on the books. And we are a country of laws.
Every once in a while someone would raise the specter of seniors with estates large enough to owe estate taxes voluntarily choosing to go to the Kool-Aid counter just to spite the government during this very narrow window of opportunity. Imagine all that extra dough available to your loved ones simply because you cashed out before Jan. 1, 2011.
