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
Removing the capital from the hands of the owner and putting it into the hands of the Government is only, in the main, taking it from the live hand and putting it into the dead hand. So the only possible result of extending the scope of confiscation by the dead hand is to limit the amount of productive enterprise and, therefore, the amount that can be paid in wages.
In defense of the Federal estate tax it is said that it will tend to check the growth of large fortunes. But is not such a Federal death tax a penalty on industry, thrift, and business success? The estate tax is communistic in essence; and no party except the Socialist party endorses the Federal estate tax.
[The estate tax] represents a real tax on capital, and such a tax is necessarily unsound and unscientific because it tends to defeat itself as a revenue producer.
Another seriously untoward effect unavoidably inherent in inheritance taxation is that by such taxation a portion of the capital fund of the nation is transferred into the coffers of the Government, and by it used for operating expenses.
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.
