Death tax

{{uspolitics}}
{{cquote|Those who have inherited the savings of others have an advantage which they may have in no way deserved, over the industrious whose predecessors have not left them anything.|||[[John Stuart Mill]]<ref>[https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html?chapter_num=18 Principles of Political Economy]</ref>}}
{{cquote|Now my advice for those who die /
Declare the pennies on your eyes|||[[The Beatles]], ''Taxman''}}
{{cquote|Three things are certain in life: Death, taxes and ''death taxes''.|||[[TV Tropes]]<ref>[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BreadEggsBreadedEggs Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs]</ref>}}
'''"Death tax"''' is an [[Loaded language|emotive]] [[Framing|neologism]] coined by an American political & communications consultant and pollster [[Frank Luntz]] during the 2000 [[U.S.]] presidential elections to refer to inheritance or estate [[tax]]es.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20121011162440/https://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/JTHE-7XPJY5?OpenDocument "Of Death, Taxes, and Death Taxes"]</ref>

==Use in the United States==
The term was used by the [[Republican Party]] to support the repeal of the estate tax by creating a false impression of the tax in the mind of the voter. In the U.S. before 2001, the estate tax almost exclusively applied to the extremely wealthy with assets totaling upwards of two million [[United States dollar|dollars]].<ref>[https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estate-tax IRS on the estate tax]</ref> Through careful manipulation, the Republican Party managed to convince almost a ''fifth'' of the American electorate that the Estate Tax would apply to them,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20151017144435/https://yale.edu/macmillan/shapiro/ycias02.pdf ''The Political Uses of Public Opinion: Lessons from the Estate Tax Repeal''] (opens as a.pdf)</ref> whereas in [[reality]] it affected less than 2% of estates.

This led to the passage by the U.S. [[Congress]], in 2001, of legislation to eliminate the estate tax gradually over nine years.  However, in 2010, the year when estate taxes were eliminated, the [[Democrat]]s passed a bill restoring the estate tax, albeit at a much lower level than previously and a much higher minimum taxable value.

The policy of eliminating the estate tax has been criticized as contributing to the creation of a [[Income inequality|permanent aristocracy]].<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/07/the-american-aristocracy/60095/ The American Aristocracy], ''The Atlantic''</ref>

==Use in the United Kingdom==
{{cquote|[[Death]] is the most convenient time to tax rich people.|||David Lloyd George<ref><i>Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918-1923</i> (1933)</ref>}}
The [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]] in the [[United Kingdom]] picked up on the term during the 2007 party conference when the shadow chancellor George Osbourne used the term in describing the party's proposal to increase the inheritance tax threshold from £325,000 to £1,000,000. However, Osbourne seemed somewhat more reluctant to commit to using the term "death tax" in the same aggressive manner as U.S. politicians.

==Why estate tax might be a good thing==
Inheritance, especially if one of your ancestors is rich, tends to create a form of modern gentry; it's no secret that you need [[money]] to make money and that having money (and thus being able to invest) greatly influences your level of [[education]], income, health, and political influence.
Even in "first world" countries, there is still a significant amount of [[income inequality]] (and even downright [[poverty]]), so this can be construed as more than slightly unfair, especially since none of these benefits are from their labor, but have simply been bestowed upon [[birth]]. In [[France]], for example, about 15% of the national income was due to inheritance;<ref>[https://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2011QJE.pdf On the long-run evolution of inheritance: France 1820-2050; Thomas Piketty]</ref> while down from the 24% in 1900, it is significantly higher than the 4-5% in the 1950s. [[Supply-side economics]] in practice.

An inheritance or estate tax works to level the playing field, as it were. Ideally, everyone would start at the same point, and would gain his or her money by personal merit, rather than having the luck of being born into it; inheritance tax would facilitate this, and would thus improve social mobility, and might make the [[American Dream]] somewhat feasible.

==See also==
*[[Health care rationing]] (aka. "Death Panels")

==References==
{{reflist|2|90%}}

[[Category:Neologisms]]
[[Category:United States politics]]
[[Category:Tax]]
[[Category:Conservative deceit]]

Categories: Neologisms, United States politics, Tax, Conservative deceit