Tag: Taxes

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Business

Biden Poised to Elevate Taxes on Enterprise and the Wealthy

Biden Poised to Raise Taxes on Business and the Rich

Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to collect taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure like roads and water pipes, or programs like education and childcare to help people make more money, could help reduce persistent inequalities in income and wealth. Economists also say that properly put in place tax increases would incentivize multinational corporations to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to countries with lower taxes.

“The purpose of the tax system is to both generate enough income for what the government wants to do and to ensure that we encourage activities that are in the national interest and discourage those who do not.” said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Key Democrats are trying to get the party to reach consensus. Leading Senate tax writer Ron Wyden of Oregon is drafting a series of tax hike bills, many of which overlap with Mr Biden’s campaign proposals.

“I will be ready to speak about what the Democratic caucus deems necessary to move forward,” said Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in an interview.

Mr Wyden’s plans include major changes to parts of Mr Trump’s tax cuts that revamped United States’ taxation of multinational corporations, including creating some sort of minimum tax on overseas income. Mr Wyden and many Democratic economists, including some within the Biden administration, say the tax was designed to ultimately lead companies to keep moving their profits and activities offshore to avoid American taxes. Republican economists and some tax experts disagree, saying the law allowed US companies to compete better globally.

A report by the Joint Tax Committee of Congress earlier this month showed that multinational corporations paid an average US tax rate of less than 8 percent on their income in 2018, compared with 16 percent in 2017. The report also found that these companies Their taxes did not slow down the practice of posting profits in low tax havens like Bermuda.

Mr Biden, Mr Wyden and Mr Sanders have all drawn up plans to increase revenue through an amendment to the 2017 law to force multinational corporations to pay more to the United States. One of the most lucrative ways to do this, according to tax scorekeepers, would be to increase the global minimum tax rate, forcing these companies to pay higher US tax rates regardless of where they find jobs or profits.

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Business

The Week in Enterprise: Go Forward, Put Off Your Taxes

The Week in Business: Go Ahead, Put Off Your Taxes

Good morning and have a nice spring. We hope you can enjoy another Sunday ignoring your tax returns (or, if you’ve already done so, feeling complacent). But first, here’s what you need to know about the business and technical news for the week ahead. – Charlotte Cowles

Good news for procrastinators like me or anyone whose taxes have been hampered by the pandemic: The Internal Revenue Service has extended the deadline for filing taxes by one month to May 17th, the passage of the American rescue plan. The law stipulated that the first $ 10,200 in unemployment benefits would be tax-free for those who earned less than $ 150,000 in the previous year. This is a significant benefit for many people whose jobs have been disrupted. But if you’ve already filed, don’t worry – the IRS said it would automatically send these refunds to qualified people.

Relations between China and the Biden government got off to a rocky start with the first face-to-face meeting between diplomats last week. On the eve of the talks, the United States took a confrontational tone by imposing sanctions on 24 Chinese officials for undermining democracy in Hong Kong. In return, China’s top diplomat accused his American colleagues of being “condescending” among other things. According to President Biden’s team, the aim of the three-day meeting was to find common ground for climate change and the fight against the pandemic, and to dispel US concerns about Chinese trade and military interference. The tension is not a good sign of moving forward in future negotiations.

Ten women suing the Walt Disney Company for “widespread gender pay discrimination” added another charge to their list: Disney “has a strict policy of pay secrecy.” A new section of the lawsuit relates to an episode in which a Disney employee was “disciplined for passing her wages on to employees.” Pay transparency is seen as an important part of closing racial and gender pay gaps, and retaliation for discussing your own pay is in violation of California law and the National Labor Relations Act. Disney has denied the claims and vowed to defend itself.

Walmart jumps on the vaccination record and says they will provide standardized digital vaccination cards to anyone who gets vaccinated in any of their stores or at Sam’s Club. The retailer will develop a health passport app that will allow people to check their status at airports, schools, sports arenas and other potentially crowded places. Walmart joins an existing push by major health centers and tech companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and the Mayo Clinic, as well as a European Union proposal that would require vaccine reviews for travel in specific areas.

How has the pandemic changed your taxes?

Are business stimulus payments taxed?

No The so-called economic impact payments are not treated as income. In fact, it’s technically an advance on a tax credit known as a Recovery Rebate Credit. The payments could indirectly affect state income tax payments in a handful of states where federal tax is deductible from taxable state income, as our colleague Ann Carrns wrote. Continue reading.

Are my unemployment benefits taxable?

Most of time. Unemployment insurance is usually subject to both federal and state income tax, although there are exceptions (nine states do not levy their own income taxes, another six are exempt from taxation according to the tax foundation). However, they do not owe so-called wage taxes, which are paid for Social Security and Medicare. With the new relief bill, the first $ 10,200 in benefits will be tax-free if your income is less than $ 150,000. This applies to 2020 only. (If you’ve already filed your taxes, see IRS guidelines.) Unlike employer’s paychecks, unemployment taxes aren’t automatically withheld. Recipients have to register – and even if they do, federal taxes are only withheld at a flat rate of 10 percent of the benefits. While the new tax break will provide a cushion, some people might still owe money to the IRS or certain states. Continue reading.

I worked from home this year. Can I make the home office deduction?

Probably not, unless you are self-employed, an independent contractor, or a gig worker. The revision of the tax law at the end of 2019 removed the home office allowance for employees from 2018 to 2025. “Employees who receive a paycheck or W-2 solely from one employer are not entitled to the allowance, even if they are currently working from home. Said the IRS. Continue reading.

How does the family leave the credit work?

The self-employed can take paid foster leave if their child’s school is closed or their usual childcare provider is unavailable because of the outbreak. This works similarly to the smaller sick pay – 67 percent of average daily earnings (for either 2020 or 2019), up to $ 200 a day. However, the care leave can last 50 days. Continue reading.

Have the rules for donating to charity changed?

Yes. This year, you can deduct up to $ 300 for charitable donations even using the standard deduction. Previously, only those who made a breakdown could claim these deductions. Donations must be made in cash (such as checks, credit cards, or debit cards) and must not contain any securities, household items, or other property. For 2021, the withdrawal limit for joint applicants will double to $ 600. Itemizer rules have also become more generous. The charity donation limit has been removed so individuals can contribute up to 100 percent of their 60 percent gross adjusted income. However, these donations must go to charitable organizations in cash. The old rules apply, for example, to contributions to funds advised by donors. Both provisions are available until 2021. Read more.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter executives are grilled in Congress this Thursday, this time for their failure to tackle the spread of misinformation. Technical executives were last summoned by lawmakers in November 2020 when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey faced a firestorm of content moderation questions, largely because of their attempts to prevent a wave of falsehoods in the presidential election. This time around, they will be asked about misinformation about coronavirus vaccines and the electoral fraud conspiracy theories that continue to spread on their platforms.

The two biggest names in economic policy – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – will appear together for the first time this week as they testify to the House Financial Services Committee on the progress of pandemic relief efforts. The hearing comes a week after the Fed revised the economic outlook to forecast stronger growth and more reassuring that interest rates would stay near zero for years to come.

Education has ditched Trump-era policies that restricted debt relief for students defrauded by nonprofit educational institutions. Newly hired Teen Vogue editor Alexi McCammond stepped down over racist and homophobic tweets she posted a decade ago. Retail sales fell 3 percent in February as consumers struggled with declining stimulus effects and devastating winter storms.

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Business

How Your 2020 Taxes Are Affected by the Coronavirus Pandemic

How Your 2020 Taxes Are Affected by the Coronavirus Pandemic

You need to know how much you have already received in order to receive credit. If you don’t have the information about the amounts (note 1444 for the first stimulus payment and 1444-B for the second), you can find the information by creating a custom online account. (Spouses filing together have separate accounts.)

The quickest way to get the credit is to file a tax return electronically and have the money deposited directly, even if you don’t have to file anything else. If you make $ 72,000 or less, you can do so for free through the IRS Free File program.

This is especially possible if your financial situation or your status has changed in the last year.

The 2020 tax return recovery credit is based on an individual’s 2020 tax year information, while the second business stimulus payment is based on the 2019 tax year. (For the first stimulus review, the IRS said, a 2018 return may have been used if the 2019 return was not filed or processed.) If your 2020 income fell and you did not receive the full amount, you could maybe do more get.

The same applies to changes in living conditions. For example, if you had a child in 2020, you may be eligible for more money or you may no longer be dependent on your parents’ tax return (and were in 2019), which may make you eligible.

Undocumented immigrants without a Social Security number are not eligible for payments – and the CARES Act, the $ 2 trillion aid package that went into effect in late March, also prevented most spouses and children from receiving checks, even if they were U.S. Were citizens.

The December The auxiliary bill has at least partially changed that. Now married couples who submit joint feedback may be able to reclaim payments for a spouse who has a valid social security number, the IRS said. Every child with a social security number is also entitled to payments.

To determine if you qualify, use the discount credit recovery worksheet or tax preparation software.

The latest aid package includes an additional stimulus payment of up to $ 1,400. The IRS calculates payments based on your most recent tax return.

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Business

Whistle-Blower Says Credit score Suisse Helped Purchasers Skip Taxes After Promising to Cease

Whistle-Blower Says Credit Suisse Helped Clients Skip Taxes After Promising to Stop

The Swiss bank also hired Mr. Wray, then a partner at King & Spalding in Washington, who served as head of the Department of Justice’s crime department and oversaw the Enron task force. (Mr. Wray became director of the FBI three years after negotiating the final plea for Credit Suisse.)

“It is a mystery to me why, under the agreement, the US government did not require the bank to spit out some names of US customers with secret Swiss bank accounts,” said Carl Levin, then a senator in Michigan who was leading an investigation into Offshore Tax Avoidance said after the 2014 opposition agreement.

In the interview, Mr Neiman, the whistleblower’s attorney, said that in July 2014, after the plea deal was signed and Credit Suisse awaited his final conviction, he told officials from the Justice Department’s tax department and federal prosecutors who was on worked on the case that his client had information that the bank was still camouflaging money held by some US account holders. He gave them a name in particular – Dan Horsky, the retired economics professor who lived in Rochester, NY

The tip was checked out. The following year, federal agents arrested Mr. Horsky, who had amassed a fortune of $ 200 million and hidden with the help of Credit Suisse bankers using offshore shell companies, court documents show. The deal lasted several months after the bank signed its pleading agreement.

It is unclear why the Justice Department failed to notify the court and change the terms of its settlement with Credit Suisse based on information from the whistleblower – either prior to Credit Suisse’s final conviction or after Mr Horsky’s case became public. At the time of the conviction, lawyers on both sides told the court that they had no information that could affect the agreement.

Officials with authority to make the decision to review the Credit Suisse case for possible violations in 2014 and 2015 – including James Cole, who was then assistant attorney general, and Dana Boente, the US attorney at Eastern District of Virginia – did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2015, Mr Horsky pleaded guilty to defrauding the US government and said he would work with prosecutors. In 2017 he was sentenced to seven months in prison. Some details of his conviction have been sealed, and a federal judge denied a request from Bloomberg News to lift the seal. The judge said he denied the application after consulting with the Justice Department and Mr Horsky’s lawyers.

Mr Neiman’s client could be amply rewarded if the prosecution imposed further fines on Credit Suisse. According to an IRS rule, whistleblowers can receive up to 30 percent of the amount of additional money the government receives. And, said Mr. Neiman, the whistleblower has more American account holder names than Mr. Horsky’s, although he wouldn’t say how many.

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Business

Janet Yellen on Jobs, Debt, Taxes, Local weather and Cryptocurrency

Janet Yellen on Jobs, Debt, Taxes, Climate and Cryptocurrency

Private equity managers should also take note of the following: She implied that she would like to deal with “interest income” which allows some financiers to pay taxes on their income at capital gains rates as if they had invested the money themselves.

Ms. Yellen seemed less convinced of a financial transaction tax, which some have suggested could bring in $ 80 billion a year by imposing a small fee on every trade that would hit Wall Street especially.

“It might deter speculation, but it could also have negative effects,” she said.

Ms. Yellen duplicated the “buyers watch out” message to Bitcoin investors. “I don’t think Bitcoin – I’ve already said that – is widely used as a transaction mechanism. I’m afraid it is often used for illegal finance, ”she said. “It’s an extremely inefficient way to conduct transactions. And the amount of energy that goes into processing these transactions is staggering. But it’s a highly speculative advantage and I think people should be careful. It can be extremely volatile and I am concerned about possible losses that investors could take. “

Ms. Yellen is more interested in the prospect of the Federal Reserve developing what is known as a digital dollar than she has first made public comments on the prospect. Crypto backers might interpret this as confirmation of the idea – Ms. Yellen’s immediate predecessor, Steven Mnuchin, seemed less interested – that shares some of the technologies underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“It makes sense for the central banks to look at this,” she said. “We have a financial inclusion problem. Too many Americans really don’t have access to basic payment systems and bank accounts, and I think this is something that a digital dollar – a central bank digital currency – could help with. I think this could lead to faster, safer, cheaper payments. “

There are a number of “problems” that need to be resolved before central banks move into digital currencies, she said. “What would be the implications for the banking system? Would this lead to a huge movement of bank deposits into the Fed? Would the Fed deal with retail customers or try to do so at the wholesale level? Are there any concerns about financial stability? How would we deal with money laundering and illegal financial problems? There’s a lot to consider here, but it’s definitely worth checking out. “

Ms. Yellen said dealing with climate change is part of a broader mandate for the Treasury Department, as well as other departments under President Biden. One of the most intriguing comments she made was about the role of financial institutions and the risk they are exposed to by investing in or lending to companies exposed to climate change.

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Politics

Supreme Court docket Denies Trump’s Bid to Conceal Taxes, Monetary Information

Supreme Court Denies Trump’s Bid to Conceal Taxes, Financial Records

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday denied a final attempt by former President Donald J. Trump to protect his financial records and issued a brief, unsigned order that ended Mr Trump’s fierce 18-month battle against the Manhattan prosecutor’s tax filings in investigating possible financial crimes.

The court order was a decisive defeat for Mr Trump, who went to extraordinary lengths to keep his tax returns and related documents confidential and took his case to the Supreme Court twice. No disagreements were found.

From the start, Mr. Trump’s struggle to keep his return under wraps had tested the scope and limits of the president’s power. Last summer, the judges rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that prosecutors cannot investigate a seated president and ruled that no citizen was above the “common duty to produce evidence.” This time, the court denied Mr. Trump’s urgency motion to block a subpoena on his records, effectively closing the case.

The ruling is also a huge victory for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. He now has access to Mr. Trump’s eight years’ worth of personal and corporate tax returns, as well as other financial records that investigators believe Mr. Vance to be critical to their investigation into whether the former president and his company manipulated property values ​​in order to get them get bank loans and tax benefits.

“The work continues,” said Mr Vance in a statement.

In his own long statement, Mr. Trump commented on the Supreme Court decision and investigation. He characterized the investigation as a politically motivated attack by the New York Democrats and called it “a continuation of the greatest political witch hunt in our country’s history”. He also falsely reiterated that he won the 2020 election.

“The Supreme Court should never have allowed this ‘fishing expedition’, but they did,” Trump said. He added, “For more than two years, New York City has been reviewing almost every transaction I’ve ever conducted, including finding tax returns filed by the largest and most respected law and accounting firms in the United States.”

Prosecutors in Manhattan now face a monumental task. Dozens of investigators and forensic accountants go through millions of pages of financial documents. Mr. Vance brought in an outside consultancy and a former federal attorney with significant experience in white collar and organized crime cases to gain an insight into the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.

The Supreme Court order set in motion a series of events that could lead to the terrifying possibility of criminal proceedings against a former US president. At the very least, the ruling removes Mr Trump’s control over his best-kept financial records and the power to decide when, if at all, they will be made available for public inspection.

The court’s decision concerned a grand jury subpoena issued by Mr. Vance’s office in August 2019 and sent to Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA. The company has announced that it will comply with the courts’ final decision, which means the grand jury should receive the documents in a short time. On Monday, Mazars issued a statement saying it “remains committed to all of our professional and legal obligations”.

The pivotal next phase of the Manhattan investigation will begin this week when investigators collect a huge amount of digital records from a law firm representing Mazars, according to people aware of the matter who spoke about the anonymity condition of the investigation because of the sensitivity of the investigation as well former prosecutors and others who described next steps.

Armed with the subpoena, investigators will go to the law firm’s Westchester County office outside of New York City and take away copies of tax returns, financial reports, and other tax records and notices from Mr. Trump and those of his companies.

The investigation, which began in 2018, first looked at hush money payments to two women who had said they had affairs with Mr Trump, relationships that the former president has denied. However, since then, potential crimes such as insurance, tax and banking fraud have emerged.

Even before the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Vance’s investigation had intensified as his office had issued more than a dozen subpoenas and interviewed witnesses in the past few months, including employees of Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders.

One focus of Mr. Vance’s investigation is whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, has increased the value of some of its signature properties in order to get the best possible credit while lowering values ​​to lower property taxes, those of the Knowing have said of the matter. The prosecution is also reviewing statements made by the Trump Organization to insurance companies about the value of various assets.

Mazars’ records – including tax returns, the business records on which they are based, and communications between the Trump Organization and its accountants – can allow investigators to get a more complete picture of possible discrepancies between what the company claims to its lenders and the company Get tax authorities said the people.

It remains unclear whether prosecutors will ultimately bring charges against Mr. Trump, the company, or any of its executives, including Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

The court order will not place Mr. Trump’s tax returns in the hands of Congress or automatically publish them. The grand jury’s nondisclosure laws keep the recordings private unless Mr. Vance’s office charges and brings the documents into evidence in a lawsuit.

The New York Times received tax return data for more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his corporate organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.

Last year, the Times published a series of research articles based on an analysis of the data that showed that Mr Trump had paid virtually no income tax for many years and that he is undergoing an audit where a negative decision could cost him more than $ 100 million. He and his companies file separate tax returns and employ complicated and sometimes aggressive tax strategies.

As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to disclose his tax returns, but he never did, breaking White House tradition. Instead, for reasons that have been speculated about, he fought hard to keep the returns out of control.

In 2019, Mr Trump went to court to combat the subpoena, arguing that as the seated president he was safe from criminal investigation. The United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled against this argument, and prosecutors may require third parties to produce a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.

Mr Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. In July 2020, the judges firmly rejected Mr Trump’s central constitutional argument against the subpoena in a seminal judgment.

“No citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the general duty to produce evidence if requested in a criminal case,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in favor of the majority in that decision.

Although Judges Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. disagree on other aspects of the decision, all nine judges agreed to the proposal. But the court gave Mr. Trump another opportunity to challenge the subpoena on more specific grounds.

Mr Trump did just that, arguing that the subpoena was too broad and constituted political harassment. These arguments were rejected by a trial judge and the New York federal appeals court. The appeals court found that the documents presented to the grand jury would not be published, undermining the argument that Mr Vance was trying to embarrass Mr Trump.

“There is nothing to indicate that these are anything but normal documents that are normally relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct,” the court said in an unsigned statement.

Mr. Trump’s attorneys then filed an “emergency motion” and asked the Supreme Court to stand up for him. They asked the court to block the appellate court’s decision while it decided whether to hear another appeal from Mr Trump, arguing that the president would suffer irreparable damage if the grand jury saw his financial records.

In response, Mr. Vance’s attorneys referred to the Times articles. The cat, they said, was out of the pocket. “With the details of his tax returns now being made public, the confidentiality interests alleged by the applicant have been severely weakened, if they survive at all,” said Vance.

In addition to combating the subpoena from Mr. Vance’s office in court, Mr. Trump sued the suspension of a Congressional subpoena for his return and successfully challenged a California law requiring presidential candidates to clear their return.

Legal experts said the court order effectively ended Mr Trump’s legal search and further attempts to thwart the subpoena could undermine his defense.

“Trump is not respected as a former president,” said Anne Milgram, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney who later served as attorney general in New Jersey and was critical of Mr. Trump. “Under the laws of New York State, he has the same rights as others in the state. Neither more nor less. “

Jonah E. Bromwich and Maggie Haberman contributed to the coverage. Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.

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Business

You Made Cash on GameStop. This is What You Must Know About Taxes.

You Made Money on GameStop. Here's What You Need to Know About Taxes.

For example, suppose a high-income investor bought 100 shares of GameStop on Jan. 4 when the shares were trading at $ 17.25 and paying $ 1,725. The trader then sold the shares on Jan. 27 when they hit $ 347.51 and grossed $ 34,751, making a profit of $ 33,026. The tax bill for someone in the upper income bracket would be an estimated $ 13,475.

And that’s just federal taxes. Many states and cities value their own capital gains taxes or treat capital gains as ordinary income that is taxed at higher rates.

Some GameStop traders have stated that they bought shares in 2019 and held them for more than a year. If so, they would be entitled to favorable long-term capital gains tax rates if they made a profit on the sale. The top rate would be 20 percent; Higher earners would also pay the additional 3.8 percent for a rate of 23.8 percent.

Individual traders can also suffer capital losses if they sell a stock for less than they paid for it. This can be used to offset capital gains and lower taxes, said Tony Molina, accountant and senior product specialist at Wealthfront, an online investment service.

Less experienced investors sometimes violate tax regulations with so-called “wash sales”. In this scenario, an investor with a large capital gain from the sale of a company’s stock is trying to generate a loss to offset the tax burden. The investor sells shares in another share at a loss – but then quickly buys the share back. That’s a no no.

“You can’t,” said Fr Evan Stephens, a tax partner of Sensiba San Filippo in San Jose, California. If you buy back the same or similar shares within 30 days, you will not be able to use the loss incurred to offset your profit.

On the radar is a proposal from President Biden to eliminate the cheap long-term capital gains rate for taxpayers earning more than $ 1 million and increase the top tax rate on ordinary income. There were even rumors that if the changes were approved, they could be made retrospectively as of early 2021. “Is that likely? No, ”said Tim Speiss, partner in EisnerAmper’s personal asset group. “Could it happen? We do not know it. “

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With Larger Taxes Potential, Right here’s What to Do Now

With Higher Taxes Possible, Here’s What to Do Now

Some tax problems will arise later this year. One of these concerns people who own businesses and pay self-employment tax. They pay 12.4 percent of their income in social security taxes and 2.8 percent for Medicare, but only for the first $ 142,800. This cap could be lifted so that all income is subject to self-employment tax.

One strategy is for owners to convert their business from a limited liability company to an S sub-chapter company, which could lower the tax on self-employment, said Edward Reitmeyer, partner in tax and corporate services at Marcum, an accounting firm.

But it has to be done carefully. What an S-Gesellschaft pays in distributions from the company’s income is exempt from self-employment tax. However, the owner of the S corporation cannot simply make distributions to himself. he must receive some compensation, which is subject to self-employment tax.

“The IRS will come after you if your compensation is too low,” said Mr. Reitmeyer. “But with this structure you are at least prepared to change the unlimited income tax on income.”

Business & Economy

Updated

Jan. 22, 2021, 7:23 p.m. ET

Perhaps the biggest concern for this year is what will happen to the capital gains tax rate, which is currently 20 percent. Most wealth advisors will bet on an increase, probably at the same level as income tax. That’s not such a jump for most earners, but for someone in the top tax bracket, 37 percent.

How much tax you pay on the appreciation of your stock holdings is one of the few taxes that you can control because it is up to you when selling stocks. However, you need to calculate whether it makes more sense to sell stocks that have appreciated particularly after the 2020 ramp-up and pay the tax now or hold on to them.

Several factors play a role here. If the strategy is to hold these securities until your death and not pay capital gains tax, this tax break could come to an end, as my column pointed out last week. The Biden government could repeal the rule that fixes the value of assets in an estate at the time of the owner’s death and wipes out years of capital gains. The administration could instead require that heirs pay tax on those profits when they sell the property.