As some of you may know, Congress has now set the Estate/Gift Tax lifetime exemption, which was scheduled to be reduced to $1 million on January 1st of this year.  However, Congressional action has now resulted in the exemption being set at $5 million. This amount will be adjusted for inflation.

For 2013 the exemption amount is therefore $5,250,000.

For those of you who decided to use the entire exemption amount available in 2012 ($5,120,000) you will now have an additional $130,000 exemption available.

Also, for those of you who are US citizens with a non-US citizen spouse don’t forget you may make annual gifts to your spouse that do not reduce your life-time exemption amount.

For 2013 the annual non-US citizen spousal exclusion amount is $143,000.