For many years now, owners of closely-held corporations or partnerships have been able - with bona fide business purpose - to structure the business entity and transfers of business interests to family members so that discounts would be available for gift tax purposes against the value of the interest. The IRS this week issued anticipated proposed regulations that could result in these discounts being unavailable. Certainly, we need to digest these proposed rules, and they a

Congress had all good intent when they introduced the idea of rolling a decedent's unused federal estate tax exemption over to his or her surviving spouse (so-called "portability"). Use of portability is - not surprisingly - more involved than first meets the eye. However, it should for all estates be elected, since one never knows when it may be needed. While I would not ignore pro-active estate tax planning and rely on portability as a planning technique, I strongly recom