Tax: Estate

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

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.

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Otto H. Kahn, New York Times.
02/29/1924 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Estate

Estate taxes, carried to an excess, in no way differ from the methods of the revolutionists in Russia.

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Andrew W. Mellon.
04/01/1924 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Estate

[President Roosevelt’s endorsement of an inheritance tax gave] more encouragement to state socialism and centralization of government than all the frothy demagogues have accomplished in a quarter of a century of agitation of the muddy waters of discontent.

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The Philadelphia Record
04/14/1906 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Estate

These taxes are a levy upon capital. There is no requirement in our law, as there is in the English law, that the proceeds from estate taxes shall go into capital improvements of the Government. In other words, capital is being destroyed for current operating expenses and the cumulative effect of such destruction cannot fail to be harmful to the country.

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Andrew W. Mellon.
04/01/1924 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Estate

Evidence

  • 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.Â