America’s federal estate tax should be a way to even the playing field between people who inherit wealth and people who must work for a living, wrote Amy Hanauer, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and Naomi Walker, the executive vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. The tax should also ensure that those who are ultra-wealthy pay the appropriate amount in taxes.
However, because policy-makers have allowed the estate tax exemption—which is the value of an estate someone can own before paying taxes—to grow so much, just eight of every 10,000 people who died in 2019 had an estate that could be taxed. Right now, a person can have a $14 million estate and a couple could have a $28 million estate before the taxes kick in.
There’s currently legislation with 166 cosponsors in the works that would eliminate the estate tax entirely, though it’s unlikely to pass in Congress, Hanauer and Walker wrote—though it might if Republicans take control of Congress and the presidency.
