Delaware is now the latest state to have repealed its estate tax. Representatives recognized the need to repeal the tax as many former residents escaped to Florida to avoid the burden. “We came to the realization that it was absolutely necessary to do [estate tax repeal] because we were losing more in income tax than what we would gain in estate tax,” says Rep. Mike Ramone, the bill’s primary sponsor and a small business owner. The Delaware change will make that 17 states plus D.C. for 2018. New Jersey’s estate tax is also a goner as of Jan. 1, 2018, but its inheritance tax remains on the books. In Delaware, 10 Democrats voted for repeal in the House, and three in the Senate. Fellow Democratic Rep. John Kowalko, in an opinion piece in The News Journal, called their votes “betrayal” and said that estate tax repeal victimizes the state’s needy at the expense of the wealthy. This piece seems to ignore the basic understanding that as more tax-paying residents migrate to states without the estate tax, overall revenues decrease.
See Ashlea Ebeling, Latest State to Repeal Estate Tax: Delaware, Forbes, July 5, 2017.
Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
