The Estate Tax is a Tax on the Less-Wealthy

When estates are not taxed, the money doesn’t disappear; rather it is invested in the ideas of those who are not yet wealthy. Most of us won’t inherit from the founder of Microsoft, Dell, or Ford, but most of us have benefitted from innovations wrought by the founders of all three. When estates are taxed, the government is really just taking capital away from tomorrow’s innovators.

A common pro-estate tax argument is that an estate tax prevents accumulation of wealth and power. But in reality the enforcement of an estate tax offers “today’s wealthy a form of government protection from future entrepreneurs who might like to knock them off of their perches, but who have less wherewithal to do so thanks to Washington vacuuming up limited capital.”

John Tamny, The Estate Tax is a Tax on Those Without Estates, Forbes, Sept. 20, 2010.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (WealthCounsel) for bringing this to my attention.