Calvin H. Johnson, U. Texas Law School, has made available for download his article, The Estate Tax Gap, published at 163 Tax Notes 1479 (July 25, 2019). The Abstract is as follows:
The Internal Revenue Code provides that all property transferred by reason of death shall be included in the gross estate whether the property is real or personal, tangible or intangible and wherever located. The IRS Statistics of Income, however, indicates that estate and gift tax reaches only 25% of the IRS would expect to collect if wealth transferred at death were included in full in the gross estate. The paper uses calculations based on the Saez and Zucman statistics of wealth, and defends those statistics as the best for estate tax purposes. The rest or 75% of value is lost to undervaluation of the property transferred. The articles suggests some simple steps to combat undervaluation, including ignoring temporary restrictions the decedent has added to the property to suppress its supposed value, and delaying the valuation date until the decedent’s retained interest have expired. But the talent of the estate planning bar is such that we should not expect full and fair valuation of property transferred by reason of death
Johnson, Calvin Harsha, The Estate Tax Gap (June 3, 2019). 163 Tax Notes 1479. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3417312
Click Johnson, The Estate Tax Gap, Tax Notes to download full article.
Posted by Lewis J. Saret, Co-General Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal..
