The Estate Tax

Out of every 1,000 Americans who die, only two pay the federal estate tax, which in 2018 brought in $23 billion, or less than 1 percent of U.S. tax revenue. It’s remarkable, then, that such a minor tax has continued to be a major partisan battleground. Democrats decry the tax’s erosion over recent decades as a giveaway to the richest Americans at a time of surging wealth inequality. Republicans haven’t quite succeeded in the outright repeal of what they call the “death tax,” which they say it am