H.R. 1301 — Death Tax Repeal Act

This section establishes the short title of the Act as the “Death Tax Repeal Act.”

This section repeals the Federal estate tax and generation-skipping transfer tax for estates of decedents dying, generation-skipping transfers, and gifts made on or after the date of enactment. It adds new Internal Revenue Code sections 2210 and 2664 to terminate chapter 11 estate tax rules and chapter 13 generation-skipping transfer tax rules, respectively, while preserving limited rules for certain distributions from qualified domestic trusts for the surviving spouse of a decedent who died before enactment. (Thus, qualified domestic trust distributions made after the 10-year period beginning on the date of enactment would no longer be subject to section 2056A(b)(1)(A), and section 2056A(b)(1)(B) would not apply on or after enactment.) This section also revises the gift tax rules to conform to the repeal of the estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. It replaces the current unified credit structure with a gift tax rate schedule that applies rates from 18 percent on taxable amounts not over $10,000 to 35 percent on amounts over $500,000, and it sets the lifetime gift exemption at $10 million, indexed for inflation after 2011 and rounded to the nearest $10,000. It also makes conforming changes to section 2505 and section 2801, including replacing a cross-reference to section 2001(c) with a cross-reference to section 2502(a)(2). The section further provides that, for purposes of sections 1015(d), 2502, 2505, and 2504(b), the year of enactment is treated as two separate calendar years for certain gift tax computations and as one preceding calendar period for section 2504(b).