That's one way to kill venture capital! Title could just as easily read "Obama will seek to raise taxes on Startups to finance ...".
Thankfully startups have at least the QSBS Section 1202 100% exclusion on the first $10m of capital gains through 2014. It helps smaller funds and founders, but there are enough gotchas (e.g. 5 year holding period) that VCs would still be looking at that 28 percent pretty seriously. I wish they would make the 100% exclusion permanent to eliminate the uncertainty, it's hard making decent planning decisions when all the tax rates are changed retroactively at the end of the year.
"The administration’s proposal on capital gains at death would exempt the first $200,000 in capital gains per couple plus $500,000 for a home, along with all personal property except for valuable art and collectibles. The rest would be treated for income-tax purposes as if it had been sold." -- Bloomberg.
That is absolutely terrifying. It would be bad enough to eliminate the step-up in basis and make heirs pay tax on the full nut when selling... but to actually treat the property as if it were sold, that means you actually have to sell it in order to pay the tax! This is actually extremely hostile to middle-class taxpayers.
Imposing taxes in the absence of an actual sale is brain dead. If your parents spend their lives accumulating a couple million dollars in assets they want to pass onto the children, you should not have to liquidate their entire estate just to give nearly half in taxes the day after they die.
Maybe all of this is after the estate tax exemption, in which case it wouldn't be nearly as catastrophic. But it doesn't sound like it from what I can find.