***** ...The tax code currently excludes the first $675,000 from taxation for most estates and $1.3 million for family-owned farms, ranches and small businesses. And by 2006, the exclusion for most estates will climb to $1 million....
...In 1997 -- the last year for which the Internal Revenue Service has data -- less than 2 percent of the families inheriting estates had to pay an estate tax -- fewer than 43,000 estates in 1997....
<http://www.nctimes.com/news/090800/pp.html> *****
***** The Washington Post July 20, 2000, Thursday, Final Edition SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A25 HEADLINE: A Middle Class 'Estate Tax' BYLINE: Eliot Fishman
...There are some striking similarities between estate taxes and the means test for nursing home coverage. They each net federal and state governments about $ 30 billion a year. (Out-of-pocket spending for nursing home care totaled $ 31 billion in 1998 according to government figures.) They both are subject to semi-legal avoidance; indeed, the Medicaid policy literature is filled with talk of "Medicaid estate planning" and state programs to recover Medicaid expenses by seizing the homes of dead former beneficiaries.
The difference is that Medicaid ceilings affect many more estates than the estate tax does. The estate tax affects only estates larger than $675,000, and that figure will rise to $ 1 million over the next few years. Only 43,000 families paid estate taxes in 1997.
Means-testing nursing home coverage affects hundreds of thousands of people a year. About 300,000 current elderly nursing home residents had assets that they have lost or will lose before becoming poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. The government will not pay for nursing home care for people who possess non-housing assets of $2,000 or more. (Even a house is included if there is no one living in it and the nursing home resident is not expected to go home.)
An even larger number of previously middle-income seniors qualified for Medicaid on admission to the nursing home for the sole reason that incipient nursing home expenses effectively impoverished them -- nursing home residents must contribute virtually their entire income to the nursing home to qualify for public assistance....
Nevertheless, two other countries with much older populations -- Japan and Germany -- have recently changed from means-tested to universal nursing home coverage. (They have differed over the challenging question of informal care in the home: Germany reimburses it, Japan does not.)
But Congress and the states have been trying to squeeze savings out of Medicaid nursing home coverage, not expand it....
The writer is a senior research associate at the Institute for Medicare Practice at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Keith Chu, an intern at the institute, contributed research to this article.... *****
***** Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service San Jose Mercury News February 13, 2001, Tuesday SECTION: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS HEADLINE: Itemized deductions can add up BYLINE: By Mark Schwanhausser
Every taxpayer is entitled to claim a standard deduction -- it's the no-fuss, no-muss, no-receipts-required method that most taxpayers use to trim their adjustable gross income.
But many taxpayers can save more by itemizing their expenses, taking advantage of deductions available to donors, business owners, job-hunters, homeowners, investors, patients, parents and taxpayers of all stripes.
Here's a list of deductions that could warrant investigation. As they say, certain restrictions apply....
48. Accounting fees for tax-preparation services and IRS audits.
49. Legal fees to prepare an estate plan if it requires federal, estate and gift-tax advice.
50. The cost of contesting a tax, including federal taxes, a property-tax assessment, and estate or gift tax or a state criminal indictment for tax evasion. *****
Yoshie