Nor is anyone's death taxed. In many respects it is the least offensive tax we have. The better you do for yourself, the more the government punishes you for your efforts. But then almost all taxes harm people, drain wealth, encourage inefficiency, and generally drag down the level of human achievement. Think of tariffs, which discourage trade, or sales taxes, which discourage buying and selling.
Taxes are still necessary, of course, because, in an imperfect world, government is necessary.
The estate tax is one of the few exceptions. And it does so only after a person has kicked the eternal bucket, sparing him or her the burden. The significance of estate laws and taxes to the maintenance of American democracy was put best by Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who knew the alternative as well as anyone. Tocqueville saw the essence of the American Revolution in the abolition of primogeniture, the English property scheme that ensured that land was kept whole within any particular family by passing it on intact to the eldest son and to no others. America's revolutionary abolition of this system helped disperse wealth and discourage the indolence of aristocratic inheritance.