Reid Asks Frist To Postpone Estate Ta Debate

Life insurance executives will face new sales challenges if Congress permanently reduces the estate tax in the coming weeks. [@@]

Just a week ago, Senate Majority Leader William Frist, R-Tenn., was intent on addressing the issue quickly. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is asking Frist to postpone discussion of estate tax repeal.

“Given the tragic and devastating events along the Gulf Coast, members of the Senate would have great difficulty explaining why we were debating the estate tax during our first days back when we know hundreds of thousands of families are suffering,” Reid writes in a letter to Frist that also was sent to news organizations.

Suneet Kamath, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company L.L.C. New York, writes in a research note issued before Katrina hit that approval of a cut in the estate tax would be bad for life insurers.

“Any permanent reduction in the federal estate tax, or increase in the exclusion amount, could reduce the demand for survivorship life insurance, which is often sold the fund this tax,” Kamath writes in the note.