ning boon. pnuIC GJUILC-LaA UcILLIGS -leUre - mama watcn nap:// of ogs.maricetwaten.comiencoreizu I .5/V4/29/coming-soon... ar Is Another Bear Market Around the Corner? If you have a $500,000 portfolios you should download the latest report by Forbes columnist Ken Fisher's firm. It tells you where we think the stock market is headed and why. This must-read report includes our latest stock market forecast, plus research and analysis you can use in your portfolio right now. t Click Hare to Download FISliEft INVES1MPN Market Watch April 29, 2013, 12:09 PM ET Coming soon: More estate-tax battles The word "permanent" — at least in the corridors of Washington, D.C. — doesn't mean what you think it means. And that should prompt you to keep a close eye on your estate plans. More inheritance headaches loom. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which was signed into law in early January, established a "permanent" $5 million estate-tax exemption. The legislation also set the same $5 million exemption for the federal gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax. (That figure is indexed for inflation, which makes the 2013 exemption $5.25 million.) But as Kelly Greene reported this weekend in the Walt Street Journal, President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget calls for lowering the exclusion for estate taxes and the generation-skipping transfer tax to $3.5 million (albeit not until 2018). The gift-tax exemption, meanwhile, would drop to $1 million. The proposed figures would be a return to 2009 levels and would no longer be indexed for inflation. According to the proposed budget, the changes — coupled with closing other "estate-tax loopholes" — would raise $79 billion over 10 years. Which means that the only permanent thing about estate planning would be efforts by financial advisers and tax attorneys to stay one step ahead of Washington's search for revenue. To be sure, the president's proposals are unlikely to be enacted in their cur