1977, February, Pg. 267. From the Wool-Sack.

• Author: by Christopher R. Brauchli

6 Colo.Law. 267

Colorado Lawyer

1977.

1977, February, Pg. 267.

From the Wool-Sack

267Vol. 6, No. 2, Pg. 267From the Wool-Sackby Christopher R. Brauchli"A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass bottomed boat." ---Mayor James J. WalkerThose of you who have read this column for the last two months and who know little about tax law may conclude that if you represent no one named LaVere Redfield or if you are willing to take the chance that none of your clients will ever die leaving behind full orphans, you can rely on what you have read in these columns and not trouble yourselves further with the Tax Reform Act of 1976. Such reliance would be ill-advised. Although the past two columns have highlighted some of the provisions of the LaVere Redfield Estate Tax Relief Act, the portions discussed have been special interest legislation.

Special interest legislation is usually considered bad because it affects only a few persons. Social reformers insist that since legislators are elected by all the people, the legislation they pass should affect all the people and not be for the benefit of special interest groups. Reformers who thus argue have probably never read a statute, for had they done so they would fervently wish that more of our laws (being oft ill-conceived and badly written) would affect fewer, rather than more people. Nowhere is this truer than in the Internal Revenue Code.

It would be utopia if we were to awake one morning to learn that the entire Internal Revenue Code affected only a very few special interest groups and none of the rest of us. That, as we all know, is not the case. The Code and the Tax Reform Act touch the lives of all citizens and some of the provisions in the Reform Act provide the taxpayer with more of a poke than a touch. One such area provides for a carry forward basis, one of the more onerous provisions to be included in the Reform Act and one which should do more to generate increased income for lawyers than the most imaginative lawyer could have dreamed of generating for himself.

As anyone who is in the field of estate planning knows, there has been an effort in the last few years by some morticians to make dying less expensive(fn1) and by legislators to make probate simpler, a sort of double whammy which dispelled some of the gloom formerly enveloping many a prospective...