本杰明·富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)在200多年前指出,“在这个世界上,没有什么东西可以说是确定的,除了死亡和税收。”不幸的是,这两个不可避免的事件以联邦遗产税的形式合为一体,在减缓经济增长、降低社会流动性和浪费生产活动方面造成大量破坏性结果。此外,遗产税所造成的开支远远超过这种税收可能产生的任何利益。 从表面上看,一些观察家可能认为,目前的遗产税是没有严重争议的。例如,人们往往声称,遗产税只是落在“富人”身上,因此起到减少收入不平等的作用。遗产税的其他支持者提及遗产税在1998年征集的230亿美元税收收入,或者遗产税激起的把遗产留给慈善组织 Benjamin Franklin pointed out more than 200 years ago that “there is nothing in this world that can be said to be definite, except death and tax.” Unfortunately, the two inevitable events are federal inheritance tax The combination of forms has devastating results in slowing economic growth, reducing social mobility and wasting productive activity. In addition, the cost of inheritance taxes far exceeds any possible benefit of such taxes. On the surface, some observers may think the current estate tax is not seriously disputed. For example, people often claim that inheritance taxes only fall on the “rich” and thus play a role in reducing income inequality. Other supporters of the estate tax mentioned the $ 23 billion in tax revenues collected by the estate tax in 1998, or the inheritance tax that left the legacy to charitable organizations