Rate Trends

The Estate Tax is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death. It consists of an accounting of everything you own or have certain interests in at the date of death. The honest market value of these items is used, not necessarily what you paid for them or what their values were when you bought them. The total of all of these items is your Yucky Estate. The includible property may consist of cash and securities, real estate, insurance, trusts, annuities, business interests and other assets.

Once you have accounted for the Yucky Estate, certain deductions and in special circumstances, reductions to value are allowed in arriving at your Taxable Estate. These deductions may include mortgages and other debts, estate administration expenses, property that passes to surviving spouses and qualified charities. The value of some operating business interests or farms may be reduced for estates that qualify.

After the net amount is computed, the value of lifetime taxable gifts, beginning with gifts made in 1977 is added to this number and the tax is computed. The tax is then reduced by the available unified credit. Presently, the amount of this credit reduces the computed tax so that only total taxable estates and lifetime gifts that exceed $1,000,000 will really have to pay tax. In its current form, the estate tax only affects the wealthiest 2 percent of all Americans.

Most relatively simple estates, cash, publicly traded securities, small amounts of other easily valued assets, and no special deductions or elections, or jointly held property, do not require the filing of an estate tax return. A filing is required for estates with combined yucky assets and prior taxable gifts exceeding $1,500,000 in 2004 – 2005; $2,000,000 in 2006 – 2008; and $3,500,000 effective for decedents dying on or after January 1, 2009.

Earthquake July 16 2010. Maryland, A 3.6 magnitude earthquake struck near the Gaithersburg, Maryland, area just after 5 a.m. ET Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The center of the quake was about 20 miles northwest of Washington, the USGS said.

The earthquake was the largest in the area since 1974 and the first registering above 3.0 on the Richter scale there in that time period, said Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.

“This is a significant event for the region,” she said.

About an hour after the quake, Vaughan said more than 5,500 people had reported feeling it across Maryland, in nearby Washington, and in states including West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware.

“It was really loud, like a plane flying really low. I had never felt anything like it,” said Anne Ngunjiri, 30, of Gaithersburg. “I was jolted out of bed. All my neighbors woke up. After it passed, I thought it could be an earthquake, and lay in bed hoping there were no aftershocks.”

Judy Rudolph, 64, said she was writing e-mails in bed in Rockville, Maryland, when her house started to shake.

“My first reaction was the noise?. I thought it was an explosion,” she said. She said she’d never felt anything like it in her 31 years living there.

Until Friday, the largest earthquake recorded within a 75-kilometer, about 47 miles, radius of Gaithersberg since 1974 was a 2.7-magnitude quake in 1993, Vaughan said.

But geologically speaking, she said it was “not completely unexpected” for a 3.6-magnitude quake to hit there.

“Occasionally these things do happen even east of the Rockies, even though it’s not really on a plate boundary where we expect earthquakes? Faults do exist from when the continent was forming. There are small faults that do exist within this area,” she said.

Vaughan said major structural hurt was unlikely, but people may experience aftershocks for the next day, or even a week or two after the quake.

Washington’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency said no injuries or property hurt had been reported.

The last earthquake in Maryland occurred on October 8, 2007, according to the USGS website. It was a 1.7-magnitude quake about 5 miles northwest of Baltimore.