Estate Taxes in the United States

Plain-English Law

State or federal taxes imposed (Estate Taxes as defined by Nolo’s Encyclopedia of Everyday Law (p. 437-455)) on property at a person’s death. Some states also impose inheritance taxes on the people who inherit the property.

Taxes Online Resources

For federal tax forms the Internal Revenue Service A href=”http:\\www.irs.ustreas.gov/forms_pubs/forms.html”>(www.irs.ustreas.gov/forms_pubs/forms.html) is the center of the universe. The IRS continues to offer forms that you print and complete in several file formats, the most prominent of which is Adobe’s portable document format (PDF), which requires you to download and install (unless you already have it) the free Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).

A welcome surprise in the past year is that the IRS now presents an extensive list of interactive forms (www.irs.ustreas.gov/forms_pubs/fillin.html) that may be completed and submitted using your computer, without printing out anything. If you want to do everything electronically, there are several commercial tax software packages (www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/elec_svs/partners.html) you may use, in conjunction with selected IRS-approved e-filing partners (www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/elec_svs/ero/indiv.html).

The California Franchise Tax Board (www.ftb.ca.gov/) provides forms back to 1994 (www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/index.htm) in PDF. Full electronic filing is available to professional tax preparers who have been accepted in a special program (www.ftb.ca.gov/elecserv/efile/efile_pros.htm), and individuals may file from home or office (www.ftb.ca.gov/elecserv/efile/Olsp_list.htm) through several selected companies (www.ftb.ca.gov/elecserv/efile/Olsp_list.htm#On-Line Filing Service Providers).

For those of you interested only in pure tax law, look at the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 of the U.S. Code, Chapters 1-100) from Cornell Law School (www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/). It permits you to browse or search for specific sections or information. Title 26 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Internal Revenue Service (www4.law.cornell.edu/cfr/26cfrI.htm#start) will give you hours of unhappy study.

You may get the current version of California’s Revenue and Taxation Code by going to the State Code (www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html), maintained by the Legislative Counsel, and clicking the tiny box next to Revenue and Taxation Code, then clicking the Search button at the bottom of the page. That will give you the Table of Contents, or you may search the tax code by keyword.

To stay current for federal tax legislation, go to the Library of Congress’s Thomas Legislative Information on the Internet (http://thomas.loc.gov/), where you may search with the keyword tax, or go to the Topics page (http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d105/hot-subj.html) and scroll to Taxation. For California legislative changes visit the Legislative Counsel’s site (www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html) and search with the keyword tax, the author’s name, or a specific bill number.

Top online resources:

• taxsites.com/ (Tax and Accounting Sites Directory)
• taxlinks.com/ (Millennium Tax Links)
• lectlaw.com/inll/109.htm (Internet Law Library Taxation)

Resources

See Also

• Estate Tax
• Inheritance Taxes
• Types Of Taxes
• Graduated Taxes
• Death Taxes
• Estate Planning
• Estate
• Massachusetts Taxes
• Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Of 1974
• Evasion Of Taxes
• Social Security Taxes
• Excise Taxes
• Estate Sales
• Income Tax

Further Reading

• Information about Estate Taxes in the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law.