Tax: Estate
The estate tax is levied upon the "taxable estate" of a fantastically wealthy deceased person to any recipient (with certain allowances made for federally-recognized spouses and charitable organizations). The vast majority of people are unaffected by the estate tax. As of 2011, $5 million can be transferred from the taxable estate of a deceased individual without becoming eligible for the estate tax.
Cry Wolf Quotes
They increased inheritances to the point where cash must be hoarded to pay the tax collector in case of death.
[H]igh inheritance and estate taxes do compel the sale of assets, with consequent changes in ownership, shifts in management and generally dislocating effects.
The Federal Government should keep estate taxes as a reserve in times of national stress. All prior inheritance taxes have been war taxes; and it is only now that it is proposed to destroy this reserve in times when revenues from other sources are adequate and even in excess of the Nation's needs. Such a course of action is not only thoroughly unsound but borders on economic suicide.
Confiscation of private wealth does not make the public or even its agent, the government, rich. It does not create equality of wealth, but an equality of poverty.
Evidence
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Estate Tax Basics
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains the reality of the much-mythologized estate tax.
Backgrounders & Briefs
Estate Tax Policy Brief
By Joseph J. Thorndike
Since at least the 1920s, estate tax opponents had been trotting out the same litany of warnings and complaints about the Estate Tax.
