Tax Bill Lets Family Businesses Focus on Wealth Transfer Headache
Featured in Bloomberg Law, Robert F. Mancuso speaks on how family businesses can now navigate the Great Wealth Transfer with confidence and clarity, and lays out a strategic roadmap for family enterprises searching for the right capital partner.
Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
After years of whiplash surrounding the estate tax, the tax and spending package signed on July 4 places a permanent 40% ceiling on the federal estate tax. This simple, straightforward inclusion in the bill frees 32 million US family businesses to price and plan for succession for the first time in decades.
In what is being referred to as the Great Wealth Transfer, an estimated $105 trillion is poised to change hands over the next 20 years. With the sunset of the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act less than six months away, family held businesses may have been envisioning tax scenarios from zero to confiscatory.
But the tax package leaves key tools intact. Valuation discounts and the stepped-up basis—two provisions that have been highly effective in estate planning—survived the negotiations…
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