The amount of gifts that may be made in 2012 by one person to another without causing the donor to include some portion in his taxable gifts (the “annual exclusion amount”) will remain at $13,000.
By statute, the estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax exemptions, which were “reunified” at $5 million per person in the “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Authorization and Job Creation Act of 2010” (“TRA 2010”), are increased by inflation for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2011. Any increase must be rounded to the nearest multiple of $10,000. In 2012 that inflation adjustment will result in an exemption of $5,120,000 per person. These exemptions, in the absence of Congressional action, are scheduled to fall to $1 million on January 1, 2013 (adjusted, in the case of the GST exemption, for inflation).