Bryan Cave LLP has once again been recognized as a U.S. News – Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” National Tier 1 ranked firm for its work in Trusts & Estates.  Awards are determined using several criteria, including: client evaluations, peer attorney feedback, and, notably, managing partners and practice area chairs’ reviews. Congrats to the Bryan Cave Private Client Group!

The Internal Revenue Service updated the estate tax exemption amounts in Revenue Procedure 2018-18.   The inflation-adjusted estate tax exemption for individuals in 2018 is $11.18 million and $22.36 million for married couples.

Chambers & Partners has recognized London Partner, Dyke Arboneaux,  in the Chambers Global 2018 guide.

Arboneaux is ranked globally in Band 3 for her international private client work. She also is recognized as a foreign expert based in the UK for her work in the USA Tax section of the guide. The publication notes that one source praised Arboneaux’s “broad expertise and experience.”

For more information about Chambers and Partners, visit their website at www.chambersandpartners.com.

The 7520 rate for February 2018 will remain at 2.6%.

The February 2018 Applicable Federal Interest Rates can be found here.

The 7520 rate for December 2017 increased to 2.6%.

The December 2017 Applicable Federal Interest Rates can be found here.

The Department of the Treasury has withdrawn the controversial proposed regulations for Section 2704 of the Code.  Section 2704 limits valuation discounts in family-controlled entities for certain lapsing rights and restrictions.  The proposed Regulations would have expanded the scope of Section 2704 by adding a new classification of disregarded restrictions and by narrowing several longstanding exceptions.  Comments submitted after the regulations were proposed complained that the requirements were unclear and that the impact on state law was difficult to predict.  On October 2, 2017, the Department of the Treasury submitted a report recommending that the proposed 2704 Regulations be rescinded and today the proposed Regulations were officially withdrawn by notice published in the Federal Register (82 FR 48779).

The 7520 rate for August 2017 has increased to 2.4%.

The August 2017 Applicable Federal Interest Rates can be found here.

In light of this week’s $448 million lottery jackpot – the 7th largest in Powerball history – the following is a re-posting of our blog entry from January 12, 2016.  If you ever do hit it big, make sure to do everything you can to avoid the “curse of the lottery.”

With up to $1.4 Billion at stake in Wednesday’s Powerball, those who play the lottery are busy making plans for what to do with all the money they may win.  If you win it, you won’t ever have to worry about money again – right?

In a recent Notice, the Internal Revenue Service set forth some administrative procedures helping taxpayers recalculate gift and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption with respect to gifts and bequests made to or for the benefit of a same-sex spouse, or descendants of same-sex spouses before the Supreme Court Case United States v. Windsor was decided, even though the statute of limitation for claiming such exemption had expired.

Prior to the Windsor decision, the U.S. government (and by extension, the Internal Revenue Service) did not recognize marriages of same-sex couples. In the Windsor case, the estate of a decedent sought to claim the estate tax marital deduction for bequests to the decedent’s same-sex spouse (the couple was legally married in Canada and their marriage was recognized by their home state of New York prior to

On Wednesday afternoon the White House again proposed eliminating the so-called death tax as part of its tax reform plan, but the details remain sparse.  When pressed for specifics Director Cohn simply stated that with the implementation of the administration’s tax plan, the death tax would disappear.

The phrase “death tax” entered the popular lexicon by way of tax reformers wanting to summarize and caricature the several parts of the Federal transfer tax system.