Here is an excerpt from an article on Bloomberg.com which discusses the state of the Estate tax and issues that are arising due to the uncertainty surrounding the tax repeal:
Estate planners and their wealthy clients are in purgatory, struggling with whether to spend tens of thousands of dollars to restructure wills, only to have to spend even more if the law is changed again.
Estate planning under ordinary circumstances is expensive and complex. The new environment poses unforeseen risks, such as potential heirs finding themselves unintentionally disinherited if wills aren’t properly rewritten, Christerson says. Others face new tax and accounting complications.
“It’s a total, complete nightmare,” says Carol Harrington, head of the private client practice group at Chicago law firm McDermott Will & Emery. “Clients are frustrated.”
It all happened because nine years ago, U.S. lawmakers approved a little-publicized footnote as part of phasing out the estate tax. To hold down the cost to government, Bush’s 2001 tax legislation replaced the estate tax in 2010 with capital-gains levies on inherited items that are sold.