Estate Tax

The Estate Tax: Hit and Myth

only about 8,000 bequests would be taxed under Obama's generous estate tax rules. To put it another way, 99.7 percent of those who die in 2011 would be exempt from the tax. Even those making more than $1 million annually would get a tax cut of $8,000 in 2012. Let’s say that again: a tax cut of $8,000. That doesn't slow down the anti-estate tax crowd. They're still spinning this as a tax increase. Orwell would be proud. 

Opponents of the estate tax are the best I’ve seen at this. Their economics may be a little shaky, but they are great polemicists. After all, they are the folks who successfully renamed the levy the “death tax” and conjured up images of an IRS agent in a cheap suit waiting to grab your last dollar as you take your last breath. They even successfully created a new image of the American Gothic—a salt of earth family farmer tearfully watching as the heartless IRS man sold his farm at auction to pay the hated tax. To mix historical metaphors, it was all enough to make us wish for a modern Robin Hood who’d save us from the evil Norman taxman. Imagine Grover Norquist as a latter-day Errol Flynn. Or not.

It is all myth, of course. TPC figures 140 family farms and small businesses would owe estate tax under the Obama proposal. You read that right: 140.  

 

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