Because the IRS gives families time to file estate tax returns, the 2020 data mostly reflects deaths that occurred in 2019.
Expect revenue from the tax to continue to drop in future years, said Tabetha Peavey, attorney advisor at the Tax Law Center at New York University, who previously worked on estate planning at a large firm.
In the years after the passage of the 2017 tax law, and especially in the last couple years, with an election looming and Democrats threatening to tighten the rules, “there was a big push to do more aggressive planning,” she said. “The higher exemption allows planners to leverage huge amounts of wealth out of an estate.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.