Friday, January 15, 2021
After President-Elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Donald Trump, the nation's eyes were largely focused on the two US Senate run-off elections in Georgia, which determined the makeup of the US Senate for the coming years and, with that, affected the likelihood of the enactment of President-Elect Biden's tax agenda and other initiatives. Now that Democrat candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have won their respective elections, the Senate is divided 50-50, with any potential tie-breaking vote resting in the hands of Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. As a result of these elections, many are left wondering how President-Elect Biden procedurally will go about enacting his various tax proposals and intentions (collectively, the "Biden Plan"), the likelihood of the enactment of the Biden Plan, whether the effective date of the Biden Plan could be made retroactive to January 1, 2021, and, if so, what can be done about this in the planning process. While the Biden Plan is comprehensive and contains proposals for individual income tax, taxes related to real property, and corporate tax reform (including increasing the top individual income tax rates, limiting deductions and taxing capital gains as ordinary income), this advisory is limited to the potential estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax reforms that President-Elect Biden has discussed.