Tax Policy Center weighs in on the Estate Tax Issue

The Tax PolicyCenter has posted “Estimatesof Estate Tax Options” and “Commentaryand Analysis on the Estate Tax” on the current Estate Tax issue in thenews. Below is from the Commentary section. The website includes more sources on its webpage.

The Senate is considering optionsto reduce or eliminate the estate tax. The estate tax, which currently taxes fortunes over $2 million at 46 percent, isestimated to affect the estates of 12,600 taxpayers in 2006. There are currently discussionson whether the repeal of the estate tax should be made permanent or altered toapply to fewer estates. Before the estate tax is permanently repealed it isimportant to understand the alternatives to repealdistributional and foregone tax costs of the variousoptions on the table. The TPC has produced preliminary estimates of thedistributional effects of some of the options reportedly under consideration and examines some ofthe implicit tradeoffs of repeal and some unintended consequences of repeal. and the