Editor's note: For three months in spring 2025, our practice executed one of the most intense client-planning campaigns in our history. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was scheduled to sunset on December 31, 2025. We did not know whether OBBBA (then in draft form in Congress) would pass, what it would contain, or when. So we ran every scenario, accelerated every defensible transaction, and helped clients capture pre-sunset benefits. Much of that work was, in retrospect, unnecessary. The work that mattered most was the work we did anyway.
April through June 2025 was the most active quarter our trust and estate department has ever recorded. With the TCJA's ¹ individual income tax provisions and estate tax exemption scheduled to sunset on December 31, 2025, and with the OBBBA's ² contents still being negotiated (final passage came July 4, 2025), our practice was simultaneously preparing for two scenarios: TCJA sunsets, returning income tax rates and the estate exemption to pre-2018 levels; or OBBBA passes and TCJA provisions become permanent.
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