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11/5/2007
Don't die for the next two months
Open a bottle of champagne and be sure you’re sitting down before you continue reading! Believe it or not, we have one less tax in Wisconsin! - an absolute miracle.
Brian Murray, an Appleton CPA and a FoxPolitics News reader, sent me a note saying the last he heard, extension of the Wisconsin Estate Tax was not in either budget – and asked if I could doublecheck that.
Well, Brian is right on the money. As of January 1, 2008, the Wisconsin Estate Tax is gone!!!
This estate tax stuff is really arcane – meant only for the pure tax wonks among us. If you really don’t have a life (or already know pretty much about this stuff), the Legislative Reference Bureau did a paper on the situation back in May, 2006. Though not bedtime reading, it explains the history and current status of the estate tax in Wisconsin in a pretty straightforward manner.
Up until 2002, Wisconsin’s estate tax was calculated as a piece of the federal estate tax. In 2001, the federal estate tax system changed drastically, resulting in a significant reduction in projected Wisconsin estate tax revenues. So in response, Wisconsin essentially turned back the clock, calculating its tax based on the old federal system, but then sunsetting that WI estate tax system on January 1, 2008.
As of now, legislative attempts to salvage the estate tax have failed – and according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), they haven’t had inquiries along this vein for quite some time. (Great – let’s keep it that way!) I talked with Faith Russell at LFB to confirm that the budget did indeed reflect this death-of-a-tax. You know the drill - “show me.”
Estate Tax Revenues
July 1, 2005 – June 30, 2006 $108.6 million (M)
2006-2007 (estimated) $100M
2007-8 (Projected) $ 95M
2008-09 (Projected) $ 25M
YES! – Budget reflects death-of-a-tax!
(Still a bit of hanger-on revenue. That’s because an estate’s executor must submit a special tax report no later than 9 months after the date of death. So anyone dying on December 31, 2007 will have until September 30, 2008 to get their estate tax forms (under today’s old rules). So the $25M is for revenue coming in the first 3 months (July – Sept.) of the 2008-09 fiscal year.) Caveat
Federal estate law sunsets December 31, 2010 – and it’s anybody’s guess what Congress will do to it. Suffice it to say that if the federal government reverts to a system similar to pre-2001 years, Wisconsin will most assuredly once again figure out how they will levy a state estate tax.
The Wisconsin Estate Tax is a monstrous burden for CPAs and for families. Ok, ok. It may be back in a few years. But for now, I’m going to revel in today’s truth – that we have one less tax in Wisconsin.
COMMENTS
The estate tax is more about class and laziness than it is about being less of a burden on CPA's. Jeez, they live off that stuff. I'm incredulous that such an argument would be made.
The estate tax is one of the few remaining ways that the ownership class gives back something through the generations to the society that has made their wealth possible.
All that bs about the Death Tax (a phrase created by Republican propagandist Frank Luntz) was used to indicate that anybody that dies payed an estate or death tax.
Not true. The estate tax is levied (there's that word again) on inheritances of a million dollars and more.
So think about all the little widgets who are the children of Angelina and Brad and Rupert Murdoch and the Walton clan plus sports stars and the captains of industry and hedge funds and other beneficiaries of huge incomes being passed on with no give-back to society.
And please don't raise the self-made man canard that the party of the promoter of hard work for anyone but themselves has been using as a dodge over the years. There are no self-made men.
Society makes the men of all of us. Some have a bit of luck, may be clever or inventive. These things are what society rewards. The estate tax is one way to prevent the heirs who have contributed nothing from hoarding wealth in perpetuity and widening the the gap between rich and poor indefinitely.
Lon Ponschock (Mon Nov 05 11:02:01 2007)
Lon,
Spoken like a true Socialist.
RE Spahn (Mon Nov 05 17:31:55 2007)
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