re: #315 Obdicut

The estate tax, please. “Death tax” is something that people came up with to pillory it.

And yes, that’s the whole point. If you can create a trust, for a legitimate purpose, you should be able to avoid the death tax. If you’re creating a trust to care for your sick kid for his life, that’s a legitimate one. If it’s just to keep him in champers and whores, then that’s not going to be an untaxed trust.

I’m advocating the estate tax be significantly raised, and the gift tax be lowered. I don’t really care about the allowance, so much as the rate.

I used to support the estate tax, but now I don’t. The estate tax punishes saving and investing your money for your children’s future and encourages you to spend it. It taxes living frugally and accumulating wealth.
If people want to get around an estate tax they can easily do it. They can set their children up in a profitable business, or they can pay for them to be lawyers, doctors or some other high-paying professional.

I would much rather encourage people to leave their estates to charitable causes than to tax inheritance.

Greg Mankiw had something good on his blog about this, quoting from two of the greatest economists of the 20th centruy, Larry Summers and Milton Friedman, who each had different views on the estate tax.
gregmankiw.blogspot.com