Book excerpt: Understanding Estate and Gift Taxation is designed primarily for use by law students taking a course on the United States transfer tax system, i.e., a course on the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. The book consists of 26 chapters, each addressing one of the basic topics typically covered in a course on the transfer tax system, including the computation of estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes; the gift tax annual exclusion; the estate and gift tax marital deductions; and the estate and gift tax implications of transfers with retained powers or interests. Because the Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulations are the primary source materials for the transfer tax system, the book includes numerous excerpts of those provisions. Each chapter also includes summaries of the leading cases and IRS rulings, plus examples of how this area of the law applies to common fact patterns. Understanding Estate and Gift Taxation is designed primarily for law students, but it is also intended to be useful to practitioners, including generalists who need a relatively brief summary of an estate and gift tax topic, beginning lawyers who intend to specialize in estate and gift taxation and estate planning, and experienced lawyers who wish to expand their practices into estate and gift taxation and estate planning. The book similarly would be useful to accountants who practice in these areas.