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Why We Oppose the Death Tax

Federal politicians' insatiable desire to
tax private citizens is nowhere more clearly
demonstrated than in the spectacle of the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seizing taxes
that are owed for no other reason than the fact that an American has died. Whether they are called federal "transfer taxes," "estate taxes" or "death taxes," they amount to the same thing: the government seizing American citizens' property at their death instead of allowing them to pass a legacy on to family or other loved ones as they see fit.

We make no bones about our assertion that
the estate or federal transfer tax should rightly
be called the "death tax," since the death of an
American is the only event that can trigger the
government's claim on this property. Neither
do we shrink from our claim that the death tax
is unfair, unnecessary, and doesn't work either
as a significant revenue raiser for the government or a valuable social policy for American society.

The "gift tax" serves as the death tax's partner in crime. The gift tax is designed by the
same politicians who brought us the death tax as a way to make sure Americans can't pass
along their property to family or loved ones as a "gift" while the gift-givers are alive. The gift
tax is just as unfair, just as unnecessary, and just as unworkable as the death tax.
Americans must reclaim their right to have the government as well as their heirs honor their last wishes at death. Americans pay payroll and income taxes all their working lives as
well as sales and property taxes on real property.

To pay nearly half of what we earn, purchase, or hold, only to have the government
claim a right to tax whatever is left a final time at our death should shock all of us into standing up and saying "Enough." We may be used to seeing the government do things that don't work and that are unnecessary. But the death tax and its partner, the gift tax, go further. They are unfair and wrong. And they should be repealed.

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