According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics of Income program, in a typical year, taxpayers file over two hundred thousand Forms 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, and pay hundreds of millions of dollars in gift taxes. Each calendar year, taxpayers gift billions of dollars to friends, family, charities, and trusts. Taxpayers file gift tax returns not only to report lifetime gifts to the IRS but also to allocate their generation-skipping transfer tax exemption to some or all of those transfers. In turn, the IRS uses the gift tax returns to impose gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes on taxpayers who have exhausted their lifetime exemptions and to keep track of a taxpayer’s remaining exemptions for taxpayers who may owe estate tax at the time of their death.

From proposals for new inheritance taxes to new consumer privacy laws, we have recently seen some significant developments in estate planning and business law. To ensure that you stay abreast of these legal changes, we have highlighted some noteworthy developments and analyzed how they may impact your estate planning and business law practice.

If you have practiced business law for a decade or more, you may have experienced a noticeable shift in the demographics of your clients who own small businesses. Between 1972—the year the US Census Bureau began providing data on all woman-owned businesses—and 2019, the number of woman-owned businesses tripled. In recent years, this trend has accelerated. From 2007, the year of the Great Recession, to 2019, the number of woman-owned businesses grew by 58 percent. Forty-two percent of all businesses were woman-owned in 2019, compared to 4.6 percent in 1972. Nearly all (99.9 percent) woman-owned businesses are small businesses. Despite their growth in number and rate of success, woman-owned small businesses experience more challenges, such as less access to financing and slower growth, than businesses owned by men.