“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”), settling some major questions about the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax law until December 31, 2012. The Tax Relief Act makes the following changes to the federal estate and gift tax system: – Estate Tax. The estate tax has returned with a larger exemption of million and a lower tax rate of 35%. – Gift Tax. The estate and gift tax exemption now are reunified, so that everyone now has a lifetime gift exclusion amount of million per person and a 35% gift tax rate for gifts over million.

“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”), settling some major questions about the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax law until December 31, 2012. The Tax Relief Act makes the following changes to the federal estate and gift tax system: – Estate Tax. The estate tax has returned with a larger exemption of million and a lower tax rate of 35%. – Gift Tax. The estate and gift tax exemption now are reunified, so that everyone now has a lifetime gift exclusion amount of million per person and a 35% gift tax rate for gifts over million.

President Obama announced the introduction of the new consumer financial protection agency, which will execute a plan for regulation reform that would improve the current “patchwork system” full of outdated regulations and lax oversight that helped lead to last year’s crisis,” and “stand up, not for big banks, not for financial firms, but for hard-working Americans.” Such changes, he says, would prevent consumers becoming victims of “predatory practices of some in the financial industry …