The Marital Deduction QTIP Provisions: Illogical and Degrading to Women - eScholarship

Abstract

In 1981, Congress enacted the qualified terminable interest property (QTIP) provisions that allow an estate and gift tax marital deduction for the full value of the underlying property where a spouse receives only a qualifying income interest for life and where the executor of the estate or the donor spouse makes a timely election. The article reviews the history of the marital deduction and its evolved rationale, explains and analyzes the current QTIP provisions together with their supposed comity with the decision to adopt the marital unit as the proper unit of transfer taxation, illustrates how the QTIP demeans women, and proposes that Congress repeal the QTIP provisions.