It is against our country's values and detrimental to our society to prevent individuals from passing their wealth on to their children. It is essentially a tax on the American Dream. Families who have low incomes but own valuable assets are often forced to sell their farms or businesses in order to raise the funds necessary to pay estate tax. The estate tax is unfair because the government has already taxed this money once when it was earned. It is a form of double taxation.
Taxes are less a factor in charitable giving than once thought.
During the Reagan years after marginal income taxes were cut dramatically, charitable giving increased despite the much-reduced tax incentive. Only a few decades ago, most Americans didn t own enough to worry much about what they left behind, but this ancient truth, like many others, is succumbing to advancing affluence. There are two problems with this argument, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Maintaining that death taxes should be abolished, this article from the National Center for Policy Analysis examines how the death tax harms family businesses, why the very rich pay less, how the tax lowers other tax revenue and the effect of the tax on capital. Congress took its first tentative step toward fundamental tax reform when it enacted the Taxpayer's Relief Act of 1997.