The GOP is going to start pushing tax cuts and major policy changes at the federal level. The result will be a slowdown in federal revenues, because that’s what happens when there are tax cuts (you lose revenue).

In many cases, those federal changes are automatically picked up by states that follow the federal changes. Those states will also see a loss in revenue without any changes of their own. That means they’ll have to affirmatively decouple from the federal changes, or set new conformity dates to avoid the revenue hit (and they know it will be coming; some states have fixed conformity dates to avoid getting blindsided by federal changes the state legislatures don’t want to adopt).

This applies to not only the estate tax area, but to corporate and individual taxes. After all, pretty much every state’s income tax returns start with federal taxable income, and if you’ve computed a lower amount as a result of federal law changes, that flows to the state tax return.

So, what you’ll end up seeing is states pushing back against moving quickly to amend the tax code, because the consequences could be budget busters for states.