1. It is not possible to predict when Congress will act and when the changes will take effect. Depending upon your situation and the nature of your assets, there may or may not be sufficient time for you to take meaningful actions ahead of the effective date of the new law. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight opportunities to plan while the current tax laws still apply. Be aware that planning steps that require loans, appraisals, creation of new trusts, or transfer of complex holdings may take more time than what will be available before the law changes.
2. If you have not yet used all of your $11.7 million gift tax exemption, we encourage you to review your planning and consider making additional gifts while it is still possible. If the exemption decreases to $6.05 million next year, you could remove up to an additional $5.7 million out of your taxable estate. Gifts of any size that you make now will reduce the exemption you will have after the change in the law. If you are married, consider having only one spouse make gifts so that the other spouse will be able to use a full exemption.
3. If you have an existing life insurance trust, we encourage you to consider contributing additional funds to the trust this year to cover future premium payments. Although the assets transferred to the trust prior to the effective date of the new law would still avoid estate tax, any future gifts to the trust, including money contributed to pay insurance premiums, would be includible in your estate and subject to estate tax. Further, if your life insurance trust is a grantor trust, future gifts could lead to undesirable capital gains tax consequences.
4. If you have an irrevocable grantor trust and don’t plan to make additional gifts, the trust should be grandfathered and no action is required; however, after the new laws become effective, exercise of certain powers such as the power to substitute assets, as well as turning off grantor trust status, could lead to undesirable tax consequences. If you plan to make additional gifts to a grantor trust, you may want to consider turning off the grantor trust status before year-end. The Trustee would then need to get a new taxpayer ID number for the trust and the trust would have to start filing its own tax returns. To avoid the very high trust tax brackets that will apply under the new law, the Trustee can distribute the income to the beneficiaries each year to have it taxed at the beneficiaries’ lower income tax brackets.
5. If you have a GRAT, consider substituting cash or other high basis assets into the trust given that there is a possibility that any annuity payment to you from the GRAT under the new tax law could be subject to capital gains tax. 
6. If you are considering a ROTH conversion of an IRA, you should try to complete it before year-end in case you are not allowed to do that in the future based on income thresholds and you may also be in a higher tax bracket next year.
7. If you are holding promissory notes or other debt instruments from loved ones that you intend to benefit under your estate plan, you should consider refinancing to take advantage of current low interest rates.