by On December 17, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (the “Tax Relief Act” or “Act”). The Act was the result of painful compromise between fiscally conservative and liberal factions in Washington, D.C. Basically the Obama administration agreed to a two-year continuation of certain income and other tax cuts dating back to 2001, in exchange for an additional 13 months of continued unemployment benefits.
You can read the 74-page text of the Act here, and the 177-page Congressional explanation of the Act here.
The Act significantly changes the estate planning landscape through 2012. For more information on the specific opportunities that exist during this brief window of time, contact an attorney in Mullen & Henzell LLP’s Estate Planning Group.
The Act also makes a 2% reduction in employees’ share of FICA taxes for 2011 (the Old Age, Survivors and Disability component, not the Medicare component), from 6.2% down to 4.2%. The employer’s portion is unchanged, at 6.2%. A comparable change is made to self-employment taxes. Even before the Act became law, the IRS issued new income tax withholding tables reflecting the 2% reduction.
The Act also affects a number of employer-provided, tax-qualified benefits, as listed below, by lifting the December 31, 2010 expiration date that otherwise would have applied under 2001 and subsequent tax laws. Unless otherwise stated all changes expire on December 31, 2012:
• Educational assistance plans under Internal Revenue Code (“Code”) Section 127 are given another two-year lease on life. The maximum dollar amount that employers can provide (whether as direct payment for education or in the form of an employee reimbursement) remains $5,250 per calendar year. Unlike education reimbursements provided as “working condition fringe benefits” under Code Section 132(d), benefits provided under Section 127 may cover study that is not necessarily limited to improving the employee’s existing skill set.
• The Act extends certain adoption benefits through 2012. The maximum adoption tax credit, and the maximum tax-exempt employer reimbursement for adoption expenses under Code Section 137, will remain at indexed rates (subject to phase-out for adjusted gross income starting at $182,500). The 2010 dollar limit was $13,170. For 2011, the maximum dollar amount of the credit or exclusion from income will be $13,360 however this will drop to $12,170 in 2012 because the Act did not extend a $1,000 increase in the limit made under the health care reform bill. For this same reason, the adoption tax credit is not refundable after 2011.
• Qualified transportation benefits under Code Section 132(f) are also continued at current levels, through December 31, 2011. Employees may exclude up to $230 from income each month in employer-provided mass transit and/or vanpool benefits; this combined dollar limit was linked to the separate $230 dollar limit that applies to employer-provided parking benefits under the 2009 recovery act. Thus, up to $460 is available per employee, per month for transportation and parking expenses. The $230 dollar limit that applies to mass transit and vanpool benefits only (not parking) was slated to drop to $120 per month on January 1, 2011.
• Tax-free IRA distributions to charitable organizations are extended through 2011. Although the Act permits 2010 IRA distributions to be made to a charitable organization through January 31, 2011, the IRS recently announced that there is no “re-do” available for individuals who took 2010 distributions prior to passage of the Act on December 17, 2010. The Wall Street Journal discusses the IRS announcement, and predicament to taxpayers, here.
E is for ERISA 
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