In other words, a dollar left to charity is a dollar. But a dollar left to an heir is 45 cents after taxes. That 55 cents on the dollar is money that would otherwise go to the government. I would not want my money going toward building bombs or whatever else the government does. But these figures do not consider whether wealthy people would give an off-setting amount to charity while alive if there were no tax on their estates, said Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.
People tend to think in their working lives that they want to give to charity.
Arnold Mullen, a business and financial planner in West Palm Beach who works with wealthy clients, made another point. For people with no desire to support charity, the estate tax is not going to be a factor in their planning, he said. Yet Mullen also said it's wrong to suggest that wealthy people will not give unless it is under the lash of an estate tax. He noted that many of his clients have already set up private foundations, donations to which are tax-deductible. Paul Schervish, director of the Social Welfare Institute at Boston University, once opposed repealing the estate tax.