Friday we discussed the Estate and Gift tax exclusions. Right now both lifetime exclusions are at $5,000,000 until the end of 2012. What happens if you gift the $5,000,000 out of your estate and Congress lets the gift exclusion go back to $1,000,000 in 2013? Well that is the $4,000,000 question. The gift tax exclusion has never gone down from one year to the next, so there is no telling what will happen. Perhaps the $5,000,000 will be grandfathered in (probably) or maybe there will be retroactive gift tax (I doubt it). This is one of the questions that people will be asking in the last few months of 2012, won’t they?