AICPA Proposals Included in New Tax Law.

The AICPA succeeded in having two of its proposals included in the major tax cut bill signed into law by President Bush in early June.

First, our package of generation-skipping transfer tax (GST) provisions will provide statutory authority for the Internal Revenue Service to grant regulatory relief for late allocations of the GST tax exemption, so that taxpayers will not necessarily have to face unintended or punitive taxes. Our proposal also makes other technical changes to the GST tax rules that will substantially alleviate their traps for unwary taxpayers. We fought hard to have our GST proposal included because it will be 2010 before the new law fully repeals the estate and GST taxes (if, indeed, that actually occurs) and taxpayers need help now in avoiding these traps.

Second, we successfully urged Congress to include our retirement education proposal in the tax bill so that employers can provide...