Alternatively: estate taxes are a huge boon to the accumulators of wealth because they allow people to shift much of their tax burden until after they're dead a

Alternatively: estate taxes are a huge boon to the accumulators of wealth because they allow people to shift much of their tax burden until after they're dead and don't need it anymore. Cut the estate tax and you'll need to increase the taxes people pay while they're alive. That's a ridiculous point, by the way. All money is taxed repeatedly. Hand it to a store. Sales tax. Report it as profit. Corporate tax. Pay it to employees. Income tax. Hand it to a different store... There's no "moral" calculus here. We tax economic activity. If you give money to someone else, be it for a candy bar or in an inheritance, that's economics and the apropriate place for government to take a cut is on something that sales linearly with the economy.