Saturday, April 24, 2004

The Winter 2003-04 Statistics of Income Bulletin has been released with a wealth of interesting tax data. (The SOI is one of the
permanent links maintained on TaxProf Blog.) From my corner of the tax world, the estate tax data (Table 17) is particularly interesting. In 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, the largest perentage of people dying were subject to the estate tax than in any year since 1976, and paid more estate tax than in any year in history:

% of Adults Dying Whose
Estate Filed Tax Returns………………Estate Tax
2.3%……………………………………………..$24.8 billion

But these statistics will change dramatically because of the estate tax relief enacted in 2001 (raising the amount exempt from estate tax in stages, as well as a phased reduction in the maximum tax rate) for 2003-2009, followed by the repeal of the estate tax in 2010 and its resurrection in 2011. An article in the same issue of the SOI projects that the number of estate tax returns will fall 13.2% in 2004 compared to 2003, and 18.2% annually during 2004-2010.

In the coming days, TaxProf Blog will summarize the Data Releases and Featured Articles in the latest SOI and provide links to the full reports.