Members of Congress are back home and set to return mid-September for a final three week session before the November elections. Add in two or three weeks of possible “lame duck” session, and that’s the extent of time available to tax writers to address the numerous items on their honey-do list:

• Preventing the 2011 tax hikes (including AMT);
• Adopting the small business tax bill;
• Extending the extenders that expired last year;
• Extending the extenders that will expire this year; and
• Something on the estate tax.

Given that these issues have been before Congress the entire year, it’s difficult to conceive how Congress would suddenly jump into …

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