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
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.
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.
It is not taxation. It is communism in disguise which deceives most of those who voted for these provisions.
Invested in reproductive enterprise this capital pays taxes again and again. Squandered by Government departments it is only spent once.
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.
