7. Most countries have a death tax rate far lower than our own, and many have no death tax at all. The United States, with its gut-punching 40 percent federal death tax rate plus the various state rates, has the
fourth-highest death tax rate in the world. We’re only ahead of Japan, South Korea, and France. Many familiar countries–Australia, Canada, Israel, and even Sweden–have no death tax at all. In a world where capital is mobile and global, this matters a lot. People don’t have to die in the United States.
8. The death tax is bad for jobs and killing it would give you a raise. Again according to the
Tax Foundation (they’ve done some great work in this field) the death tax is an economy killer. They have a macroeconomic “dynamic” model to see what killing the death tax would do to the job market. It projects that killing the death tax would create 139,000 jobs, increase private business hours by 0.1 percent, and increase wages by 0.7 percent.
9. The death tax is bad for economic growth and repeal literally pays for itself. The same Tax Foundation report says that the death tax would increase the economy by 0.8 percent (or $137 billion in today’s dollars).
Because this additional economic growth would be subject to taxation all its own, it would more than make up for the revenue lost by repealing the death tax–it would make up the $20 billion per year, plus yield an extra $8 billion per year on top of that. You heard that right–we’d actually collect more tax revenue if we stopped collecting the death tax.
10. The death tax is even bad for the environment. A recent study by
Brian Seasholes at Reason shows that the death tax leads to the subdivision of many large, privately owned land tracts. That’s because heirs–land rich but cash poor and in need of money to pay the death tax–sell off parcels of land in order to satisfy Uncle Sam. This leads to development of land which would never have been developed except for the death tax.