By Wes Lyon, CPA, CFP^®

With the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) at the end of 2025, tax laws will change. One of the most signifi cant estate tax provisions of the TCJA doubled the Basic Exclusion Amount (BEA), more commonly referred to as your lifetime exclusion amount. This is the amount of assets you can transfer to your children without paying any estate tax. Beginning in 2026, this exclusion will revert to slightly less than $7,000,000 per spouse. While that’s around half the current limit ($13,610,000 per person), it’s still very generous by historical standards.

With record government deficits and national debt, we predict the exclusion will be further reduced to increase tax revenue. Another proposed change is to eliminate the step-up in basis at death by taxing unrealized capital gains. Combined with the estate tax, this creates the potential for many doctors to be double taxed.