If you’ve been putting off making gifts of your closely held business interests, you may want to kick start that process.

Yesterday, the Treasury department announced its proposed regulations to curb taxpayers’ ability to take significant fractional interest discounts when valuing gifts of closely held business interests for estate and gift tax purposes.  These proposed regulations are targeting, in particular, the lack of marketability and lack of control valuation discounts that are often used to reduce the value of business interest gifts for tax planning purposes.

Although the proposed regulations still have to go through a 90-day public comment period, if you want to take advantage of the current valuation options you may want to work with your attorney to complete gifts of your closely held business interests before the end of the year.