Our Sponsors
____________________
Note: Comments are moderated so be sure that your responses are expressed in a respectable and friendly way. We are here to express our thoughts toward controversial issues, not to scold or defame anyone. Watch what you say, and remember that by using this site, you agree to our Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.

No, we should make it higher for rich people, unless I become rich myself.
The Estate Tax – or as it is more commonly referred to "The Death Tax" – is just another way that our government uses to steal what it is that we all work all our lives for. This tax effectively prevents the individual from leaving anything to our heirs.
Yes, in my not-so-humble opinion, the Estate Tax should be abolished.
Actually should be abolished because of this
1) Its actual targets (the super-rich who would have real hereditary wealth to pass down) use provisions in the law and tax code to avoid paying it. This is called estate planning. It's perfectly legal tax evasion.
2) It ends up targeting mostly modestly wealthy people who have fewer divisible assets and have done less financial planning.
3) I'd rather not use the tax code to foster growth in lawyers and financial industries.
4) It doesn't actually gather very much revenue at all. The amount is trivial.
5) There are far more efficient ways to tax wealth, sales taxes for instance, or indexing social benefits like medicare/social security to net wealth and income (I'd favor just abolishing both of these as well and establishing a negative income tax actually).
6) Abolishing this would mean more attention could be focused on the negative utility of corporate income taxes, or the complexity of the individual income tax and we might get real tax reform ideas out of right-leaning economic policies as a result.
Naked self-interest above integrity is at least honest, if nothing else.