A Citizen’s Guide to 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.

A Citizen’s Guide to the Death Tax

(PDF format, 19 pp. 455 Kb)